religion

Originally posted April 12, 2018.

Throughout history, human beings have been enthralled by the idea of the paranormal. While we might think that UFOs and ghosts belong to a distant and obscure dimension, social circumstances help to shape how we envision the supernatural. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, sociologist Joseph O. Baker describes the social aspects of Americans’ beliefs about UFOs.  

Baker argues that pop culture shapes our understandings of aliens. In the 1950s and 1960s, pop culture imagined aliens in humanoid form, typically as very attractive Swedish blonde types with shining eyes. By the 1970s and 1980s, the abductor narrative took hold and extraterrestrials were represented as the now iconic image of the little gray abductor — small, grey-skinned life-forms with huge hairless heads and large black eyes. Baker posits that one of the main causes of UFOs’ heightened popularity during this time was the extreme distrust of the government following incidents such as Watergate. Baker elaborates,

“I think there is something to be said for a lack of faith in government and institutions in that era, and that coincided with UFOs’ rise in popularity. The lack of trust in the government, and the idea that the government knows something about this — those two things went together, and you can see it in the public reaction post-Vietnam, to Watergate, all that stuff.”

While the individual characteristics of “believers” are hard to determine, survey evidence suggests that men and people from low-income backgrounds are more likely to believe in the existence of alien life. Baker says that believing is also dependent upon religious participation rather than education or income. In his words,

“One of the other strongest predictors is not participating as strongly in forms of organized religion. In some sense, there’s a bit of a clue there about what’s going on with belief — it’s providing an alternative belief system. If you look at religious-service attendance, there will be a strong negative effect there for belief in UFOs.”

Baker’s research indicates that social circumstances influence belief in extraterrestrial beings. In short, these social factors help to shape whether you are a Mulder or a Scully. Believing in UFOs goes beyond abductions and encounters of the Third Kind. In the absence of trust in government and religious institutions, UFOs represent an appealing and mysterious alternative belief system.

Classic social science has long thought that as societies accumulate more wealth and education, religious commitments tend to decline. But the United States always posed a troubling counterexample to this long-standing “secularization” thesis, as a very wealthy society with stronger religious commitments than others across Europe. The unique U.S. experience has encouraged researchers to think more carefully about the role of religion in society, and new sociological research is bringing this debate back into the spotlight.

In 2016, David Voas and Mark Chaves published an article arguing that the United States was no longer an exception to the old secularization theory — religiosity is on the decline here, too, but much more slowly as each new birth cohort is younger than the last. In 2017, Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock published an article building on this work, arguing that most of this decline comes from moderate religious respondents. In other words, the highly pious are remaining stable. This year, both teams published new work using the same data from the General Social Survey to see who is right. As reported in The Salt Lake Tribune, it looks like the argument continues.

The big disagreement comes down to how you view history and methods. Schnabel and Bock focus on a peak in religiosity during the Reagan era, and they show that treating this peak separately leads to flat trends in religiosity afterwards. Voas and Chaves don’t treat this time as unique, and so their analysis finds a slow decline in all kinds of religion after it occurs. The debate is important because it shows us a way forward when researchers in a field disagree — rather than just saying “it’s complicated,” we can take the time to hash out our assumptions and map out how the world really works.

On November 9th, 1938, thousands of Jewish stores, homes, and places of worship across Nazi Germany were destroyed by extremist mobs. During Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass,” dozens of Jews were murdered and another 30,000 were sent to concentration camps in this crucial shift from anti-Semitic language to physical violence. This year’s commemoration of Kristallnacht comes in the aftermath of the shooting of 11 Jewish congregants in a Pittsburgh synagogue. In recent years, ideologically motivated violence has been increasing against religious minorities. Jewish and Muslim congregations have heightened their security measures in the face of such threats. In a new article in The Conversation, Christopher Scheitle and Jeffery Ulmer analyze these increased protections and the heightened fear among many religious minorities in their spaces of worship.

Using surveys and interviews, Scheitle and Ulmer conducted a study of over 1,300 congregations to examine crime and security in religious spaces. While many congregations experienced vandalism or theft regardless of religion,  synagogues and mosques experienced threats of violence at much higher rates:

“Crimes, most commonly vandalism and theft, were committed at about 40 percent of congregations in the year prior to the survey. This overall percentage was not significantly different across religious traditions. When we dug deeper, though, we found that synagogues and mosques deal with crime-related problems that are much different than the average church. Our survey found, for instance, that synagogues and mosques were three times more likely than congregations overall to have received an explicit threat in the prior year.”

Many synagogues and mosques have sought to respond to these threats through increased security. In comparison to other religions, Jewish and Muslim congregations have incorporated many more security cameras and guards. However, these implementations are not without cost:

“Our interviews found that most places of worship have a hard time implementing security. Some of this is simply not enough money. Larger and wealthier congregations tend to have more security in place. Beyond resources, our interviews consistently found that places of worship view security measures as a potential threat to their mission of creating a sacred space that is open to their communities.”

Scheitle and Ulmer suggest that congregations can better protect themselves through cost free measures, like limiting entrances to places of worship, and through community partnerships. A knowledge of the legacies of anti-Semitism and other forms of religious discrimination also emphasizes the need for compassion and concern in the wake of such tragedies.

The mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue has been characterized as the deadliest attack on Jewish people in U.S. history, and mourning services continued last week and over the weekend for the shooting victims. In a recent article for The Conversation, Jeff Gruenewald and William Parkin discuss how the recent rise in violence against religious minority communities is often tied to far-right extremist conspiracies and ideological beliefs.

The authors argue that while violent crimes targeting religious minorities and institutions have been on the rise in recent years, it’s nothing new. Far-right extremism has existed in the United States for more than a century and motivated many of these crimes. Gruenewald and Parkin explain further:

“Unfortunately, it’s not new for far-right extremists to vilify non-white, non-Anglo-Saxon and non-Protestant religions. Judaism has endured most of their ideological rage and conspiratorial paranoia…Their dogma claims, falsely, that globalist Jews have infiltrated the government and other U.S. institutions, and that Jews and non-whites pose an existential threat to the white race.”

Using data from the U.S. Extremist Crime Database, they demonstrate that since 1990, far-right extremists have commited 217 ideologically motivated homicides, nineteen of which targeted religious institutions or individuals. While there are many examples of far-right extremist violence that have not been religiously motivated, such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the authors indicate that far-right extremist violence against religious minorities — especially places of worship — appears to be on the rise since 2010. And beyond these cases,there is evidence of over 100 failed or foiled plots against Jewish institutions or individuals between 1990 and 2014.

While mass shootings and extremist violence are rare events, Gruenewald and Parkin’s research demonstrates that there are some disturbing patterns in far-right extremism and its connections to mass violence. The authors conclude with the need to prevent far-right radicalization,

“We believe countering divisive narratives with different viewpoints informed by evidence on what works to prevent radicalization is more productive than aggravating wounds with politicized rhetoric. As Americans, we must speak openly about the perils of white supremacy, anti-Semitism and both the rhetorical and real dehumanization of those we perceive as unlike us. Those wielding political power and influence need to publicly and clearly condemn acts of violence by extreme far-rightists and the ideologies underpinning this form of domestic terrorism.”

As debates about gun control continue amid mass shootings, compromise continues to be elusive. One step toward compromise is understanding what drives attitudes about gun control. Conventional wisdom suggests attitudes about gun control are closely tied to other political views, party affiliation, or past experiences with using firearms for hunting or personal protection. Sociologists have shown that attitudes about guns are also cultural, tapping into deep assumptions about what it means to protect and provide for loved ones. Now, a new study finds an even more surprising link: attitudes about guns are closely associated with core assumptions about religion in society.

In a recent article for the Washington Post, Andrew Whitehead, Landon Schnabel, and Samuel Perry summarize the findings from their study:

“Americans who subscribe to Christian nationalism believe that America has always been ― and should always be ― distinctively Christian in its national identity, sacred symbols and public policies…the connection between Christian nationalism and gun control attitudes proves stronger than we expected. It turns out that how intensely someone adheres to Christian nationalism is one of the strongest predictors of whether someone supports gun control. One’s political party, religiosity, gender, education or age doesn’t matter.”

These findings highlight how attitudes about guns are connected to some Americans’ core sense of social identity. This makes the policy debate a proxy for arguing about who we are as a country, and such a high stakes argument invites deeply entrenched positions.

Over the course of the primary season and the beginnings of the general election, there has been a lot of inflammatory rhetoric surrounding Islam in America, mostly propelled by politicians on the political Right such as Donald Trump. Such shifts in political discussion can often have a ripple effect, and as described in an article by Vox, even the narratives and language used by politicians on the left begin moving in this direction. With help from sociology professors of Erik Love of Dickinson College, Charles Kurzman of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Neda Maghbouleh of University of Toronto, we get an inside look at how discussion surrounding American Muslims takes on problematic features.

As Islamophobic arguments move through the airways, it changes the dominant ideas about judging the “line” in political discussions. For example, alongside more extreme comments made by politicians like Newt Gingrich, Hillary Clinton’s discussion of “peace-loving Muslims” becomes a more acceptable norm. However, these narratives still function at the core by suggesting that Muslim and American identity are incompatible, or that American Muslims are unduly obligated to earn their right to respect and safety. Consider research described in the article below:

“[F]ocus groups with Muslim American communities show that Clinton’s comments also “resonate poorly,” Charles Kurzman, a University of North Carolina sociology professor, said.

“When [Clinton] frames the choices this way, it means that for Muslims to be ‘good’ and worthy cultural and political citizens of America, they have to pledge fealty to the same law enforcement, media, and politicians that have been surveilling, jailing, and abusing them based on their names, their faith, and their physical appearances.”

The Vox article is quick to point out that Hillary Clinton hasn’t always made problematic statements regarding Islam, nor is this shift in rhetoric limited to her or to this presidential race. Rather, it seems likely that as inflammatory rhetoric targeted at Muslims continues, it simply normalizes problematic, unfair characterizations and opens the door to exclusionary attitudes.

Primary season already feels interminable, and it looks like, among Republicans, Donald Trump is pulling ahead with wins in Nevada, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. The results are perplexing for our typical narratives about conservative politics for a number of reasons, but one of the most striking is that he appears to be doing pretty well with evangelical Christian voters, despite being not terribly religious himself (including a recent flub over “two Corinthians”).

Ted Cruz is a much more committed evangelical candidate. A recent piece in New Republic looks at “How Ted Cruz Lost the Evangelical Vote,” and draws on research from sociologist Lydia Bean on how a simple narrative about conservative religion and conservative politics doesn’t quite fit the reality of contemporary evangelicalism. According to the article:

Bean points out that evangelicals differ not only in their politics—with some identifying as more conservative and others as more moderate—but in their religiosity.

“Evangelicals who don’t go to church very much but identify as Christian, with Christian nationalistic rhetoric, but aren’t very well formed or advised by Christian community leaders—they’re going for Trump,” Bean says. “I think Ted Cruz is picking up the older, more observant people who are theologically and politically conservative, the people who actually go to church every week.” Rubio, meanwhile, “is picking up the younger, more cosmopolitan evangelicals…”

The relationship between religion and politics is complicated, just like any other ideological system. The most interesting sociological point in Bean’s research, though, is how different styles of practice within similar religious communities can teach people to look at politics and their choices in different ways.

Women account for about 7% of the U.S. prison population. Compared to men, they are much more likely to experience poverty, mental health issues, and various forms of victimization prior to being incarcerated. And while they’re in prison, women are more likely to experience mental health problems, chronic medical conditions, and sexual misconduct by staff members. These issues do not disappear after release, but are coupled with difficulty finding adequate employment, public assistance, and health care.

Sociologist Susan Sered was recently featured in Sojourners, which explored her advice to faith communities helping formerly incarcerated women. Drawing on eight years of research with criminalized women in the Boston area, Sered suggests churches and communities of faith can provide shared knowledge and support in the form of information about housing, employment, health systems, and social networks. She believes faith communities can help women make meaning out of their suffering by reframing their incarceration as experience that can provide them with special insight, rather than a reason to blame or ostracize them. Sered says, “criminalized women need to hear these powerful messages from religious communities.”

Read the full article here.

Recently in New York, two siblings were severely beaten—one to death—by their parents and other members of the congregation of the Word of Life for wanting to leave the “faith.” This cult is based in a former school building in which members of the church live and congregate in isolation from the greater community.

Sociologist Bernadette Barton told Broadly Vice:

When a group is isolated, they’re not beholden to a larger organization. If they’re part of a hierarchy, they’ll answer to other folks, so there are more likely to be other eyes on abuse and interventions into it. The more isolated a group is, the more likely violence can emerge.

Barton describes a “sin/fall” paradigm, where members of the cult are faced with psychological, emotional, and physical threats if they deviate from church ideology. She elaborates:

It excludes people, creates a climate of fear, scares participants, makes people monitor their own and other’s behaviors and thoughts, enables physical and sexual abuse, while absolving all individuals of wrong-doing since all of this is done (presumably) by divine order.

Public opinion polling in America dates back to the 1930s, and religious beliefs and behaviors have always been topics of interest. However, polls do not produce perfect measurements and their results can both shape and misrepresent the reality of public beliefs and behaviors. Religion Dispatches recently interviewed sociologist Robert Wuthnow about his new book Inventing American Religion: Polls, Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation’s Faith in which he details the ways in which polls have shaped the religious makeup of the American population.  

Wuthnow explains that in the 1970s, the Gallup poll’s overly broad and vague questions about evangelical identity resulted in a huge overestimation of the number of evangelicals in America at the time. He explains:

The year of the evangelical was 1976, when Jimmy Carter achieved election to the White House and the role of polling was to greatly expand the number of Americans who were evangelicals… How is that possible that a poll could do that? …Gallup said there might be 50 million Americans who are evangelicals, and journalists ran with that… The way they got 50 million was basically inventing a new question that said something to the effect of, “Have you ever had a born-again religious experience, or something similar to a religious awakening?” And that was pretty much it… There was a lot of diversity among evangelicals themselves that got masked by being lumped together in the polls as if they were all the same thing.

The results of that 1976 poll influenced not only perceptions of the number of evangelicals among journalists, but also political perceptions of evangelicals as a voting bloc. If there were that many evangelicals in America, then politicians could cater to them to gain votes. Evangelicals began to be treated as one homogenous group instead of the highly heterogenous group that they really were.

Wuthnow explains how a similar phenomenon is happening with the rise of the non-religious in America—commonly known as the “nones.” Polls and surveys are reporting an increase in those who are saying they are not religious, but these general trends can mask huge variation among the non-religious. Many, for instance, still believe in a god and go to church, and only a very small percentage actually identify as atheist. Further, Wuthnow says, people often change their beliefs and opinions over time, and poll data glosses over that fact:

Polls have always assumed that whatever a person says is reliable, and that they really mean it and stick with it. So if you find any changes over time, that’s significant because polls are measuring stable opinions—if those change, that’s important.