{"id":61659,"date":"2014-02-26T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T14:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=61659"},"modified":"2014-06-09T01:20:15","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T06:20:15","slug":"is-religion-secularizing-trends-in-opposition-to-pornography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/02\/26\/is-religion-secularizing-trends-in-opposition-to-pornography\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Religion Secularizing? Trends in Opposition to Pornography"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The term secularization is typically used to describe the process by which something becomes increasingly distant from, irrelevant to, or uninfluenced by religion. \u00a0But what about religions themselves? \u00a0Can religions undergo secularization?<\/p>\n<p>Sociologist Jeremy Thomas tested this proposition, looking at changes in how authors writing for the popular magazine <em>Christianity Today<\/em> frame their opposition to the use of pornography between 1956 and 2010 (<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/jssr.12052\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/reading-list\/selling-the-sin-free-life\/\" target=\"_blank\">summary<\/a>). \u00a0He compared three anti-pornography frames:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>religious (e.g., against the bible, a sin),<\/li>\n<li>harm to others (e.g., performers), and<\/li>\n<li>harm to self (e.g., porn addiction, marital troubles).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thomas found that the last frame &#8212; harm to self &#8212; had increasing come to dominate the discussion at <em>Christianity Today<\/em>. \u00a0This figure shows the proportion of paragraphs that make each argument. \u00a0The last frame clearly dominates.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/02\/101.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-61660\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/02\/101-500x298.jpg\" alt=\"10\" width=\"500\" height=\"298\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/02\/101-500x298.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/02\/101.jpg 542w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thomas calls this &#8220;outsourcing moral authority&#8221;: religious leaders are relying on other authorities to back up their points of view. \u00a0This suggests that even religion is undergoing secularization.<\/p>\n<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psmag.com\/navigation\/books-and-culture\/religion-secularizing-trends-opposition-pornography-75637\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The term secularization is typically used to describe the process by which something becomes increasingly distant from, irrelevant to, or uninfluenced by religion. \u00a0But what about religions themselves? \u00a0Can religions undergo secularization? Sociologist Jeremy Thomas tested this proposition, looking at changes in how authors writing for the popular magazine Christianity Today frame their opposition to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":61662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,253,42,120,291],"class_list":["post-61659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-history","tag-religion","tag-sex","tag-sex-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/02\/28.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61659"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62880,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61659\/revisions\/62880"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}