religion

How Hate Crimes Count

Evan Stewart, Jack Delehanty, Ryan Larson, and Stephen Suh on March 4, 2015

By Evan Stewart, Jack Delehanty, Ryan Larson, and Stephen Suh

The shooting of three young adults in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, raises a number of questions about hate crimes in the United States. All three victims were Muslim, and interviews with their family members about previous conflicts indicate the killings may have been motivated by anti-Islamic sentiment. On the other hand, police released a statement that the killings were motivated by a parking dispute, and the regional U.S. attorney called them “an isolated incident.” Research shows the social context of a crime matters, even when it isn’t officially labeled a “hate crime.”

Hate crimes are retaliatory and respond to particular social events and contexts. Racialized talk of hate crime, especially when discussed over the Internet, is provoked by anxieties over close social ties to minorities—such as interracial marriage or integrated neighborhoods—more than economic competition. Time, neighborhood, and labeling factors all point to social context as a necessary tool to understand hate crimes.
Social context is often ignored in hate crime data. Government offices and watchdog organizations often define hate crimes differently than others, and their data focus on the number of attacks rather than contextual risk factors. This makes it difficult to study hate crimes, especially when witness reports or police records show a parking dispute.
Anti-Islamic attitudes are also central to the UNC case. Emerging research indicates these attitudes are unique in the U.S. context as well, where racial bias interacts with cultural bias against public religious practice in a particular political climate.

Atheist Church: A Predictable Paradox

Jacqui Frost on October 8, 2014

The Sunday Assembly, an organization dubbed by the media as the first “atheist church,” more than doubled its number of “congregations” over one weekend. This group almost replicates the church model in that they meet on Sundays, they sing songs and listen to speakers, they bring snacks and coffee, and they focus their “assemblies” on building community and living a good life—they just simply do all of this with no reference to a deity or the supernatural. At first glance this seems paradoxical. Why do nonbelievers want to create something so much like the church that believers frequent? Sociologists point to one major reason – community.

The drive to come together and share space and ideas with others is a fundamental way humans build identity and community. As far back as Emile Durkheim, sociologists have shown how sharing beliefs and rituals both create and sustain identities, communities, and society. Today, sociologists are finding the same thing happening among nonbelievers who are riffing on the structure and rituals of religious institutions in order to build their own community.
Community building has historically centered around religious institutions. As Americans leave churches at an increasingly higher rate, they are left at a loss with how to form communities without the church model. In many ways, the atheist church phenomenon is due to what sociologists call “institutional isomorphism,” which shapes the available models for building community.
The church model is not the only thing that nonbelievers are borrowing either. Groups of nonbelievers have used social movement rhetoric from civil rights groups, especially LGBTQ rights, to build a movement around non-believing identities. This kind of appropriation is common, however, and sociologists argue that all movements do some version of this, looking to past movement successes to build from when creating their own strategies.

Good Kids Gone Guerrilla: Why Flee to Fight?

Jack Delehanty on September 19, 2014

Fears of a “terror pipeline” running from Western countries to ISIL and other militant groups are on the rise. The New York Times reports that at least a dozen men have left Minnesota to join radical Islamist groups. Community leaders and FBI officials suggest that cultural isolation, social discontent, and economic challenges drive recent immigrants abroad to fight, and expert accounts in the media argue solving these local problems is the best means of curbing the trend.

Social science has two things to say about this: first,  sincere religious belief, political ideology, and rationalistic behavior may play a stronger role than the media recognize. Second, Western media and governments may have an interest in portraying the motivations for militancy in particular ways.

Ethnographic research shows that the incentive structures of fundamentalist Islam make militancy an appealing choice. Young men who spend hundreds of hours per year in prayer groups and become leaders in their local mosque communities come to view radicalism as the only sure path to Heaven. They don’t join militant organizations because they are confused, isolated, or have no other choices, but because they sincerely believe that doing so is the right path.
This type of radical religious behavior becomes more appealing in times of political uncertainty. Given the instability of Iraq’s fledgling democracy following the U.S. occupation, conservative Muslims may see ISIL’s rise as an opportunity to reclaim the region after a more secular approach to governing failed.
Western media organizations have strong incentives to blame militancy on local social and cultural problems. In times of moral or cultural panic, audiences look to pundits to see who to blame. “Disaffected Muslim youth” may be one such constructed class.
And, once blame has been placed, media accounts perpetuate that particular frame of the situation through a “fringe effect” where angry arguments from the margins become mainstream.

For more on why people may flee micro-agressions at home, check out this Reading List.

Religion, Reproduction, and the Supreme Court

Jacqui Frost on July 16, 2014

The recent Hobby Lobby, and subsequent Wheaton College, Supreme Court rulings that exclude organizations with “sincere religious objections” from the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate have raised a plethora of fears and heated commentary about access to birth control, women’s rights, and the slippery slope of religious exemption. Sociological research, however, suggests that this ruling’s infringement on access to reproductive services and women’s rights is far from straightforward.

The language of birth control mandates varies by state, and the more ambiguously worded the mandate, the less likely there is to be a challenge. Instead, it is the more precisely worded statutes that have prompted court cases, as they allow for less interpretation and compromise.
The moral framing of religious exemption cases is key to making them effective. When actors frame an issue in moral terms, as opposed to scientific or technical, their arguments are usually too divisive to be completely adopted, however, they are often able to thwart their opponents by defining an issue in ways that make it difficult for legislators to support progressive causes.
A woman’s access to birth control is not only influenced by her insurance policy or the religion of her employer. Race, class, and cultural understandings of what it means to be a “responsible reproductive subject” all play a role in why women seek reproductive services such as birth control, infertility treatment, and abortion, as well as which services they are more likely to have access to.

For more on the Hobby Lobby decision and the history of birth control in the U.S., check out these great pieces by fellow sociology bloggers families as they really are and Girl w/ Pen.

Modern Mormonism: Kicking Out and Keeping In

Allegra Smith and Evan Stewart on June 30, 2014

Last week the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints drew media attention for the public excommunication of Kate Kelly, a prominent member of the church working for the ordination of women. Women are not permitted to hold the priesthood in the LDS church, meaning that they do not have the authority to act in god’s name, nor can they lead congregations or perform particular sacraments. This is not the first instance of high profile excommunications from the church—in September 1993, six Mormon professors and feminists were excommunicated after church court trials in Utah. These progressive scholars, coined the “September Six” by news media, had published research contradicting official church history, or publicly advocated a feminist position. Al Jazeera interviewed Professor Jan Shipps on the issue, who said this was one instance of the church practicing “boundary maintenance,” but how do these scandals help keep the church together?

Mormonism didn’t necessarily always exclude women from high-profile involvement with the church. Instead, the development of formal institutions and bureaucracies tended to erase historical arrangements where women had a more equal role to male priests.
Excommunicating individuals who speak out for these alternative perspectives seems extreme, but it fits a pattern we often find in organizations. Sociology shows us how punishments for individuals—like excommunications, expulsions, or other public shaming—quickly turn into an “institutional morality tale” about how the group works.

 

Allegra Smith is a master’s student in rhetoric and writing at Michigan State University. Her research interests include digital communities, queer and feminist rhetorics, women in world religions, and pornography and sexuality.

Christian Cinema?

Evan Stewart on March 25, 2014

This season’s deluge of religious films—Noah, Son of God, and Heaven is Real—has us all on the lookout for the next Bible blockbuster and wondering if well-known productions like The Ten Commandments and The Passion of the Christ were just flashes in the pan. While the market doesn’t always sink religious films, they often face controversy while navigating complex social and religious identities.

Consumption of religious movies, television, and books isn’t just consumerism. It is a complex blend of religious identification and economic practice, which can both encourage and discourage consumption.
These films also have to nail down other identities to do well in the market. The portrayal of masculine figures like Jesus and Noah represents a key way society works through gender roles.

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Religious Freedom and Refusing Service

Amy August on February 28, 2014

Despite being struck down in Kansas and vetoed in Arizona, proposed legislation granting businesses the right to refuse service to customers on the basis of their sexual orientation has been spreading across a number of states this week. As victories for gay rights leave conservative citizens looking for novel ways to fight back, the meaning of religious freedom is called into question. While the line between religious freedom and civil rights often seems like a matter of public opinion, both the enforcement of these laws—if any pass—and the fight against them face a number of institutional hurdles.

Religious and political factors have historically influenced attitudes towards gay marriage. Here’s how:
Public opinion may not be enough to change this kind of legislation, but controversy helps. State governments rely more on public conflict and issue salience as motives to act, and may be bad at protecting the LGBT population from job and housing discrimination “even when the public supports the pro-minority position.”
Moreover, how good is the “gaydar” at these religiously inclined businesses? Sexuality is learned and performed in a wide variety of social situations, and identifying patrons’ sexual orientation might pose more of a challenge than lawmakers think.

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Muslim American Superheroes

Stephen Suh on December 3, 2013

Marvel Comics recently set the comic book world abuzz after announcing the rebirth of Ms. Marvel, one of their most-famed female superheros, as a 16 year old Muslim American suburbanite named Kamala Khan. Khan, a Jersey City resident born to Pakistani immigrants, has the power to shapeshift her body. While this isn’t the first time the world has seen a female Muslim superhero, or a Muslim American superhero, it does mark Marvel Comics’ first attempts at a series with a lead Muslim protagonist. This change will undoubtedly be welcomed by many in the Muslim American community given the mostly one-dimensional portrayal of Muslims in mainstream media and art since 9/11.

While portrayals of Islam and Muslims have always been rather shallow, research indicates that they have been particularly defamatory and offensive in recent decades:
Research also shows that post 9/11 discriminatory policy and stereotyping has had a profound negative influence on the identity formation of Muslim American youth and young adults:

A Shift in Jewish Identity

Jacqui Frost on November 27, 2013

Hanukkah starts tonight! Last month the first comprehensive study of American Jews in over ten years found a drastic decrease in Jews who identify with Judaism for religious reasons and an increase in those who identify with Judaism for ethnic or cultural reasons. While this can in some ways be explained by the overall decrease in religiosity among younger Americans, a sociological understanding of these findings would also look to the interaction between ethnicity and religion.

Ethnic identities are constructed by ethnic groups, but also by external forces such as the economic and political climate the ethnic group inhabits.
The lines between ethnicity and religion are often blurry and the phenomenon of identifying with a religious or ethnic group for purely symbolic reasons is not new.
The opposite is also true – holding beliefs without being a member of any particular church or religious group is on the rise.

Malala Takes the Royal Road to Learning

Amy August on October 29, 2013

Sixteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for protesting the exclusion of girls from school in Pakistan, recently met with Queen Elizabeth II and other international leaders to promote girls’ education. Her advocacy reminds us that gender inequality in education is not limited to developing countries, but one that affects women worldwide.

In industrialized countries, female students have gained in some aspects of schooling, but the gender divide limits women’s educational opportunities as well as their roles in the home, the workforce, politics, and religion.