Sacred Heart
The Collapse of State Power, the Cluniac Reform Movement, and the Origins of Urban Self-Government in Medieval Europe
Jonathan Stavnskær Doucette & Jørgen Møller
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Several generations of scholarship have identified the medieval development of urban self-government as crucial for European patterns of state formation. However, extant theories, emphasizing structural factors such as initial endowments and warfare, do little to explain the initial emergence of institutions of urban self-government before CE 1200 or why similar institutions did not emerge outside of Europe. We argue that a large-scale collapse of public authority in the ninth and tenth centuries allowed a bottom-up reform movement in West Francia (the Cluniac movement), directed by clergy but with popular backing, to push for ecclesiastical autonomy and asceticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These social realignments, facilitated by new norms about ecclesiastical office holding, stimulated the urban associationalism that led to the initial emergence of autonomous town councils. Using a panel data set of 643 towns in the period between 800 and 1800, we show that medieval towns were substantially more likely to establish autonomous town councils in the period between 1000 and 1200 if they were situated in the vicinity of Cluniac monasteries. These findings are corroborated by regressions that use distance from Cluny — the movement's place of origin — to instrument for proximity to Cluniac monasteries.
Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan
Adam Weinberger et al.
Nature Communications, September 2020
Abstract:
Most humans believe in a god, but many do not. Differences in belief have profound societal impacts. Anthropological accounts implicate bottom-up perceptual processes in shaping religious belief, suggesting that individual differences in these processes may help explain variation in belief. Here, in findings replicated across socio-religiously disparate samples studied in the U.S. and Afghanistan, implicit learning of patterns/order within visuospatial sequences (IL-pat) in a strongly bottom-up paradigm predict 1) stronger belief in an intervening/ordering god, and 2) increased strength-of-belief from childhood to adulthood, controlling for explicit learning and parental belief. Consistent with research implicating IL-pat as a basis of intuition, and intuition as a basis of belief, mediation models support a hypothesized effect pathway whereby IL-pat leads to intuitions of order which, in turn, lead to belief in ordering gods. The universality and variability of human IL-pat may thus contribute to the global presence and variability of religious belief.
Muslim Young Adult Mental Health and the 2016 US Presidential Election
Sara Abelson et al.
JAMA Pediatrics, forthcoming
Methods: Survey data were from a random sample of students 18 years or older from 90 colleges and universities participating in the Healthy Minds Study6 in the 14 months before or after the election. This survey was approved by institutional review boards at all schools, and all participants provided written informed consent. We assessed a binary outcome defined by exceeding cutoff scores for clinically significant depression, anxiety, or eating disorders (≥15 on the Patient Health Questionnaire–9 or the Generalized Anxiety Disorder–7 or ≥3 on the Sick, Control, One, Fat, Food [SCOFF] questionnaire). Key independent variables were the timing of survey completion (after vs on or before November 8, 2016), Muslim identity (students selecting “Muslim” when providing religious affiliation, with multiple selections possible), and religiosity (students who indicated religion as “important” or “very important” vs “somewhat important,” “neutral,” “not important,” or “very unimportant”). We adjusted for differences between students who responded and those who did not respond using sample probability weights (inverse of response probability) based on institutional data on sex, race/ethnicity, academic level, and grade point average. We tested for changes in the proportion of Muslim students reporting clinically significant mental health symptoms surrounding the election beyond changes experienced by non-Muslim individuals, using a difference-in-difference logistic regression. We also tested for unique associations for Muslim individuals who were religious. We adjusted for school and self-reported student characteristics known to be associated with mental health. These analyses were conducted between November 2019 and June 2020. Analyses used a 2-sided P < .05 as a threshold for statistical significance and were performed in Stata version 15.1.
Results: The survey response rate was 25%. A total of 75 578 students (56.78% women; 2.24% Muslim) participated. Student and school characteristics are presented for the periods before and after the election for Muslim and non-Muslim participants. Differences between the groups were mostly stable over time. Mental health in Muslim and non-Muslim individuals changed approximately in parallel before the election, with no significant differential change from fall 2015 to spring 2016. Controlling for changes experienced by non-Muslim participants, the election was associated with a rise of 7.0 (95% CI, 1.0-13.0) percentage points in the proportion of Muslim students experiencing clinically significant mental health symptoms in the 14 months postelection compared with the 14 months prior. Changes from before to after the election were largest for Muslim individuals who were religious, at 10.9 (95% CI, 3.7-18.1) percentage points (vs 8.1 [95% CI, −3.5 to 19.7] percentage points for Muslim individuals who were nonreligious, 3.5 [95% CI, 1.3-5.8] percentage points for non-Muslim individuals who were religious, and 2.8 [95% CI, 1.1-4.6] percentage points for non-Muslim individuals who were nonreligious).
Do Street‐Level Bureaucrats Discriminate Based on Religion? A Large‐Scale Correspondence Experiment among American Public School Principals
Steven Pfaff et al.
Public Administration Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although public administration scholars have long studied discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, class, and gender, little to no research exists on whether street‐level bureaucrats provide differential services based on the religious identity of their constituents. This article reports the results from a large‐scale correspondence study of street‐level bureaucrats in the American public school system. The authors emailed the principals of a large sample of public schools and asked for a meeting, randomly assigning the religious (non)affiliation of the family. To get at potential causal mechanisms, religious belief intensity was also randomly assigned. The findings show evidence of substantial discrimination against Muslims and atheists on a par with, and sometimes larger than, the racial discrimination found in previous studies. These individuals are substantially less likely to receive a response, with discrimination growing when they signal that their beliefs are more intense. Protestants and Catholics face no discrimination unless they signal that their religious beliefs are intense.
Human flourishing and religious liberty: Evidence from over 150 countries
Christos Makridis
PLoS ONE, October 2020
Abstract:
This paper studies the spatial and time series patterns of religious liberty across countries and estimates its effect on measures of human flourishing. First, while there are significant cross-country differences in religious liberty, it has declined in the past decade across countries, particularly among countries that rank higher in economic freedom. Second, countries with greater religious liberty nonetheless exhibit greater levels of economic freedom, particularly property rights. Third, using micro-data across over 150 countries in the world between 2006 and 2018, increases in religious freedom are associated with robust increases in measures of human flourishing even after controlling for time-invariant characteristics across space and time and a wide array of time-varying country-specific factors, such as economic activity and institutional quality. Fourth, these improvements in well-being are primarily driven by improvements in civil liberties, such as women empowerment and freedom of expression.
When the Gods Fall: Varieties of Post-Secularization in a Small, Secularized State
Clayton Fordahl & Berglind Ragnarsdóttir
Politics and Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Lengthy debates over the process of secularization in the West have concluded. In many ways, secularization theorists appear to have “won” the debate: traditional measures of religious vitality reveal a decline in religion. Yet, recent events, especially those involving politics and national identity, have encouraged scholars and members of the public to reconsider the ways in which something like religion might endure and influence public life in secularized Western nations. This paper uses the “exceptional-typical” case of Iceland — a modern, Western, secularized country of comparatively small population size — to observe and conceptualize a variety of processes which are here collectively named “post-secularization.” Its findings suggest that processes which may appear as unrelated or opposing forces — the emergence of new religious movements, the transformation of traditional religious symbols into profane branding, far right nationalist movements — may be part of a single, post-secularization process. Secularization, having fissured the sacred, leaves religion a pliable cultural tool.
Thinking at a higher level? Religion and spirituality contribute more to global cognitive patterns among Eastern Europeans and Americans than among Western Europeans
Jay Michaels et al.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Religion and spirituality are known to significantly contribute to people’s meaning systems, which involve an integrated, coherent, global form of cognitive processing. The present study tested whether these coherent, global cognitive frameworks relate to religion/spirituality by applying key ideas from action identification theory. Action identification captures whether people tend to think according to higher-level global or lower-level situational representations. With samples from the United States, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, findings include that (a) stronger spiritual and religious beliefs/values relate to higher-level, global patterns of thought; (b) this relationship is stronger for Eastern Europeans and Americans; (c) Eastern Europeans and Americans who have strong religious/spiritual beliefs adopt higher-level, global representations more than those who have weak religious/spiritual beliefs, but this difference does not exist among Western Europeans; and (d) for Eastern Europeans and Americans, a sense that it is important to live according to one’s faith relates to higher-level thinking patterns, and this association is mediated by religious service attendance and stronger religious/spiritual beliefs. In sum, results demonstrate that the global thinking patterns that accompany experienced meaning and emerge from the meaning-making process are influenced by religion and spirituality, with the influence being amplified in societies where people are more religious than in those where they are more secular. The study demonstrates action identification theory’s utility for examining the cognitive processes theorized to underlie religiosity’s contribution to meaning making and provides evidence that religiosity’s association with these processes is also influenced by social contexts.
Resource Stress Predicts Changes in Religious Belief and Increases in Sharing Behavior
Ian Skoggard et al.
Human Nature, September 2020, Pages 249–271
Abstract:
We examine and test alternative models for explaining the relationships between resource stress, beliefs that gods and spirits influence weather (to help or harm food supply or punish for norm violations), and customary beyond-household sharing behavior. Our model, the resource stress model, suggests that resource stress affects both sharing as well as conceptions of gods’ involvement with weather, but these supernatural beliefs play no role in explaining sharing. An alternative model, the moralizing high god model, suggests that the relationship between resource stress and sharing is at least partially mediated by religious beliefs in moralizing high gods. We compared the models using a worldwide sample of 96 cultures from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), newly coded data on supernatural involvement with weather, and previously coded data on food and labor sharing. We conducted three types of analysis: multilevel and society-level regressions, and mediational path modeling using Monte Carlo simulations. Resource stress shows a robust effect on beliefs that high gods are associated with weather (and the more specific beliefs that high gods help or hurt the food supply with weather), that superior gods help the food supply through weather, and that minor spirits hurt the food supply through weather. Resource stress also predicts greater belief in moralizing high gods. However, no form of high god belief that we test significantly predicts more sharing. Mediational models suggest the religious beliefs do not significantly explain why resource stress is associated with food and labor sharing. Our findings generally accord with the view that resource stress changes religious belief and has a direct effect on sharing behavior, unmediated by high god beliefs.
Sanctification or inhibition? Religious dualities and sexual satisfaction
Nathan Leonhardt et al.
Journal of Family Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Religiosity can influence sexual satisfaction both positively and negatively. To test positive and negative mechanisms, we assessed how religiosity is indirectly associated with sexual satisfaction through sexual sanctification and inhibited sexual passion. We sampled individuals from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 1,695, Study 1) and mixed-sex dyads from Bovitz Inc. (N = 481 dyads, Study 2). Religiosity consistently had a positive indirect association with sexual satisfaction through sexual sanctification; little evidence suggested religiosity had an indirect association with sexual satisfaction through inhibited sexual passion. When accounting for these mechanisms simultaneously, however, religiosity consistently had a negative direct association with sexual satisfaction, supporting the possibility of religious dualities. In the couple study, men’s religiosity predicted their partner reporting higher sexual sanctification (for married couples), but women’s religiosity did not predict partner sexual sanctification. Altogether, these results paint a complex picture for how religiosity might influence sexuality. Understanding the nuance of these results may help people maximize the potential benefits of their belief systems in sexual relationships.