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Whether religious groups advance or limit human rights has been a topic of recent debate among human rights scholars. This article studies the conditions under which religious leaders advance human rights in the context of Argentina's Jewish community during the country's 1976–1983 military dictatorship. Three major influences on religious support for human rights—autonomy from a religious community's establishment, a missionary‐reformer identity, and congregational mobilization—are highlighted. Original archival research from the papers of U.S.‐born rabbi Marshall T. Meyer illustrates his defense of human rights in Argentina, contrasting his work with the inaction of a major established Jewish organization. Quantitative cross‐national analysis extends the case study findings by showing a relationship between religious institutions' autonomy from the state and defense of human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of W.E.B. Du Bois highlights the significance of Christian religion in Black American life. According to Du Bois, the Black Church serves as a site of self‐formation and affirmation, and the White Church as a source of racist beliefs and justifications for inequality. In this paper, we expand Du Bois' inquiry about the influence of religion with a study of Black Americans who belong to a predominantly White religion. For those whose religious experience is almost wholly within the "white world," what role does religion play in their lives? We analyze a set of 52 public accounts by Black Americans discussing their experiences as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (LDS). We find that for many Black LDS, membership in the LDS Church is characterized by contrast and contradiction, yielding spiritual conviction, joy, and meaningful communion on one hand, and racism and isolation on the other. We also find that Black LDS respond to these contradictions in a variety of ways. We classify these agentic responses into five types and examine the sociological significance of the observed variation. We conclude with a discussion of implications for scholarship on race and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a civil war brewing among evangelicals on the college campus over racial justice—calls for greater racial equality, equity, and inclusion—in the era of Black Lives Matter (BLM). It examines how the white evangelical right are framing their resistance to racial justice and redrawing the color line in the contemporary college evangelical landscape not with distant "social justice warriors" in broader secular society, but with those right inside their evangelical community who, at varying levels, are coming out in support for racial justice in 2020s America. To do this, I first examine the varied campus evangelicals that support racial justice and how they express and frame their support as proper religious practice. I then explicate how the white evangelical right utilize a strategy of colorblind‐othering to fight against these co‐evangelicals that support racial justice. Data for the study come from the Landscape Study of Chaplaincy and Campus Ministry (2019–22). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper unites disparate literature to test the influence of religious belonging and behavior characteristics along with secular welfare boundaries on anti‐immigrant attitudes. We suggest that welfare states varied in their religious foundations during the transition from religious‐based solidarity to modern state‐based solidarity and formulate a novel analytical framework to hypothesize effects across individuals and welfare regime types. Using eight waves of the European Social Survey (2002–16), we find that religious effects are strongest in welfare states with the most religious foundations, the Southern European welfare states, and weak in the universalist welfare states, which lacked historical state‐church tensions. Other welfare types show a mix of religious effects, with some challenging expectations. Furthermore, Christian majority membership is often associated with heightened anti‐immigrant attitudes, most consistently in contrast to the non‐Christian minority. For welfare‐based forms of inclusion, we find consistent institutional trust effects and two competing logics for secular boundaries: a propensity for welfare chauvinism and a culture of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 20th century, public discourse in Muslim‐minority countries has centered around the question of how to classify Muslims. In this paper, we compare the state, academic, and self‐classification of Muslims in two countries: the United Kingdom and Germany. We propose that the historical experience of anti‐Semitism makes religion a more salient master category to understand Muslims in Germany, while the history of both anti‐Semitism and anti‐Black racism largely resulting from colonial domination means that religion together with race are master categories used to understand Muslims in the United Kingdom. Through this multilayered ethnographic and historical analysis, we challenge taken‐for‐granted assumptions in both the political and academic milieu about what it means to be Muslim, emphasizing the importance of the interplay between sociopolitical categories and self‐identifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion is permitted in China, but its practice is tightly regulated by the state. This paper uses individual‐level longitudinal data to investigate the association between religious regulation and religious outcomes in China. Measures of regulation are constructed from instances of state action against Christians as well as Christian perceptions of unfair treatment by the government. In summary, as regulation increases, an individual is less likely to identify with a religion and less likely to say that religion is important. For those individuals without religious identification in either wave, regulation is negatively associated with religious importance. Yet, for those individuals with identification in one or two waves, regulation is either unassociated or even positively associated with importance. These findings contribute to research on regulation of religion and religion in China. More broadly, they demonstrate the state can wield considerable power over people's private lives but also that this power has limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has found that women are more likely than men to report belief in nonmaterial paranormal phenomena (e.g., psychics). There are inconsistent findings about whether men are more likely than women to report belief in material paranormal phenomena (e.g., bigfoot/sasquatch), and no prior survey research has examined gender expression (as masculine or feminine) as it relates to paranormal beliefs. This paper asks: How do gender identity and gender expression relate to reported paranormal beliefs? It answers this question using a large sample (n = 2504) of Canadians. Femininity helps explain differences between cisgender women and men on reported beliefs about foreseeing the future and telekinesis, but less so about reported belief in ghosts. Intriguingly, reported gender atypicality is associated with reported belief in all paranormal phenomena among cisgender women and among cisgender men. The results highlight the importance of measuring gender expression for beliefs that science cannot verify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given popular religiosity, the presence of religious parties, and the politicization of religious issues, it is highly likely that politicians with varying levels of personal religiosity are active in politics. Yet, our knowledge of how politicians' religiosity influences their political choices is still limited, particularly for developing countries. In this paper, I use data from a survey experiment fielded to Pakistani politicians in 2018 to study whether and how politicians' personal religiosity influences their political risk preferences. Scholars debate whether religiosity is correlated with higher or lower risk aversion among citizens; however, no study has examined this relationship among politicians. I find that higher religiosity systematically predicts which politicians are more risk‐averse and highly religious politicians' decisions under uncertainty are inconsistent with expected utility maximization and prospect theory. These findings suggest that in contrast to existing assumptions of elite decision‐making, politicians' religiosity systematically influences their risk preferences and choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The operation of a religious organization under an oppressive regime, such as in communist countries, differs from that in a free society. There is extensive literature on the effects of regulation on competition in religious markets and on the religiosity of a population. Less attention has been given to the effects of oppressive regulation that aims to control and possibly eliminate religion rather than to promote a particular religious group. This paper focuses on the specific question of how churches deal with oppressive regulation, particularly how they choose between legal and illegal operation. It proposes that both the official and the black‐market way of supplying religious services have some advantages and disadvantages, and that dual operation is advantageous where the regulation is severe. The paper examines the operation of the Catholic Church in Central European countries under communist rule, particularly Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and Ukraine, and the different strategies adopted by the Church concerning official and underground operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homophobia in the black community has been largely attributed to the Black Church's conservative views concerning sexual orientation. Prior research demonstrates that black congregations are generally nonaffirming of nonheterosexuality; however, few studies have investigated black congregants' responses to their churches' climates regarding sexuality. Using in‐depth interviews, this paper examines the extent to which black Christians are content with their congregations' nonaffirming climates. Findings indicate that although some black parishioners are content with or indifferent to their churches' climates, most respondents advocate for a change in how their congregations address sexual orientation, specifically calling for open conversations about sexuality. Furthermore, an examination of the language respondents used to evaluate congregational climates suggests discussions of sexuality in churches that humanize and encourage empathy for nonheterosexual identities may help facilitate such conversations. These results challenge assumptions of ideological homogeneity within religious organizations and could inform strategies to promote nonheterosexual inclusion in congregations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars have often described faith‐based universities in America as "church‐related," we argue this classification tells us virtually nothing about how the Catholic identity influences the mission, rhetoric, curriculum, or policies of Catholic institutions. Although Morey and Piderit (2006, Catholic higher education: A culture in crisis) created a more sophisticated four‐part typology of Catholic institutions, we find that students, parents, administrators, and scholars, particularly scholars interested in institutional secularization, need a better means of empirical analysis to determine the degree to which the Catholic identity of an institution influences key administrative decisions of the university. Thus, we propose a method of content analysis that can quantify how the Catholic identity shapes key administrative, curricular, and cocurricular decisions and thereby places Catholic institutions upon a continuum. We then apply our new Operationalizing Faith Identity Guide (OFIG) to Catholic institutions in the United States to demonstrate the helpfulness of its application. Replication: The data needed to duplicate and replicate the findings in the paper will be made available immediately following publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the social actors and interactions that facilitate seminary students' sense of calling. Drawing from 36 in‐depth interviews with first year Masters of Divinity students, we introduce six ideal typical social others who play a formative role in the early stages of a call to ministry: instigators, exemplars, interpreters, affirmers, challengers, and codiscerners. Together, these findings demonstrate that the call to ministry, while deeply personal, emerges through social interactions that facilitate and make plausible a person's sense of calling and that sustain it over time. Extending Richard Pitt's conceptualization of the "horizontal call," this paper argues that social others help evoke and solidify—not merely legitimate—a personal sense of call. This research also highlights differences in the social structuring of call by gender. Despite considerable gains in the ordination of women, we find that many still face obstacles to experiencing and embracing a call to ministry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compile an original database of 130,000 American clergy across 40 denominations, which we link to public voter registration data. We then link these data to mass surveys and a survey of pastors' own churches. This paper has two purposes. First, it introduces a new methodology for learning about religious communities by scraping information from denominational find‐a‐church websites. Second, the paper presents several short analyses that focus on the political affiliations of pastors and how they relate to congregants. We demonstrate that denominational affiliation is highly informative of a pastor's party registration but not a congregant's. Yet, the weak relationship for congregants masks a stronger underlying relationship between denominational affiliation and issue positions. We also demonstrate that many congregants, particularly in conservative churches, are politically unaligned with their pastor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite prayer's central role in religious life, quantitative research on prayer typically focuses on its frequency without regard to the total amount, to why, to whom, or for what a person might be praying, nor how people feel when they pray. In this paper, we broaden our understanding of the prayer practices of American adults by focusing on their (1) quantity of prayer, (2) style of prayer, (3) purpose of prayer, (4) prayer target, and (5) emotional state during prayer. Using the Baylor Religion Survey (N = 1248), collected January–March 2021, we present frequencies and findings from factor analyses of key conceptual dimensions of prayer and then indicate how prayer dimensions correlate with each other and vary by basic religion and demographic variables. Our findings provide a detailed picture of these relationships and also provide researchers with best practices in how to measure the various dimensions of prayer in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative relationship between religiosity and cognitive ability is well documented though most research on the connection between religion and cognitive factors has largely ignored how social positions like race and gender may inform the association. This paper explores how race and gender intersect with the association between religious factors and verbal ability. Using data from the General Social Surveys, I examine racial differences in the impact of religious identification, religious participation, and beliefs about the Bible on verbal ability. The analyses show that the association between religious factors and verbal ability varies significantly across racial groups, and points to some gender differences in the association between religious factors and verbal ability by race. The findings highlight the importance of an intersectional approach and suggest that psychological theorizing about the relationships between religion and cognitive ability is underdeveloped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines religious change of immigrants from Poland, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Spain in the first years after their arrival in the Netherlands––one of the least religious countries in the world. Religiosity is measured by attendance, praying, and subjective religiosity. Multiple‐group latent growth models are estimated based on four waves spanning a total of 4 years (n = 3354 at Wave 1) to identify religious trajectories. Results show an initial increase in attendance that levels off and ultimately reverses and a steady decrease in subjective religiosity across all immigrant groups. A group‐specific pattern is visible on the praying dimension: Turks show an initial increase that levels off over time and then reverses, whereas the other groups show no substantial change. The analysis suggests that differences in opportunities to attend and exclusion experiences are unlikely to be the main drivers of the immigrants' religious trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first evaluates the impact of a two‐decade‐long Islamization policy carried out by a pro‐Islamist party, which came to power in 2002 in Turkey, on the attitudes of Turkish people toward religious values, religious practices, and clergy. In this regard, how the importance of religion, frequency of going to mosques, and trust in the clergy have changed among Turkish Muslims between 2002 and 2018 were examined by using World Values Survey data and employing logistic regression analysis. Estimation results indicated a reduction in belief in God, attendance to mosques, and trust in clergy, which imply the failure of the Islamization policy. Second, we explored what caused the failure by using the same data set and methodology. Our estimations suggested that the symbiotic relationship between the pro‐Islamist government and religious clergy and institutions may explain the failure. As the government is identified with religion in the eye of the public, dissatisfaction with the government turned to dissatisfaction with religious values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In societies where the populace exhibits a wide range of religiosity, social conservatives (religiously devout or socially traditional) feel their beliefs and way of life threatened, even where others in their society (secular, or socially liberal) have no desire to threaten them, or to discriminate against them, or even to proselytize. Examples include devout English Pilgrims in liberal 16th century Holland and devout Muslims in liberal 21st century Western Europe. We suggest that this is because diversity in religiosity itself poses a threat to conventional personal morality (attitudes on abortion, divorce, euthanasia, suicide, prostitution). The consequences of societal diversity in religiosity (the centrality of religion to one's life) for individuals' endorsement of conventional personal morality have been neglected in prior research. This paper shows that diversity in religiosity at the national level undermines individuals' endorsement of conventional personal morality, net of an individual's own religiosity, net of the average levels of religiosity and socioeconomic development in the individual's society, and net of key individual‐level controls. Data are pooled from the World Values Surveys/European Values Surveys, 1981–2008, with 90 countries, 200+ surveys, and 300,000+ individual respondents. Analysis is by multilevel methods (variance components models with fixed effects and random intercepts, estimated by generalized least squares [GLS]). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, the annual numbers of exits of members from the Catholic Church and Protestant Church have been increasing. Closer inspection of diocese‐level data shows that the time‐series pattern of exits is nonlinear with a series of intermediate peaks. This paper uses an event study approach to model the impacts of various scandals on church exit rates. We find that sexual abuse and financial scandals located in the Catholic Church contribute to increased exit rates not just in that Church but also, by way of spillover effects, to higher exit rates of Protestant Church members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effect of religious affiliation on individual well‐being. Using Gallup's U.S. Daily Poll between 2008 and 2017, we find that those who are engaged in their local church and view their faith as important to their lives have not only higher levels of subjective well‐being, but also acyclical levels. We show that the acyclicality of subjective well‐being among Christians is not driven by selection effects or the presence of greater social capital, but rather a sense of purpose over the business cycle independent of financial circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This question on how religious beliefs shape attitudes about guns has received little attention in the literature. We use the religious concept of supernatural evil, or beliefs about Satan, Hell, Armageddon, and demons, to provide context for ideas about gun ownership and the development of attitudes toward gun policy. While this has been explored quantitatively using national survey data, we argue that an in‐depth qualitative approach provides necessary nuance. As part of an ongoing ethnography in Northeastern Kansas, we conducted interviews with 55 women and 7 men who own and shoot guns. For this paper, we report on a religion module subsample that probes religiosity, spirituality, and gun ownership. Based on the rich contextual information from the interviews, we illuminate a package of beliefs that come together as an ethic, a set of moral principles guiding gun ownership for a subset of gun owners. We suggest the spirit of gun ownership is a bundle of duties that guide individual gun owners to stress the need to protect, be diligent, and defend. Moreover, belief in supernatural evil is bound up in policy attitudes that protect or expand gun rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of secularization is of enduring interest in the social science of religion. Numerous recent papers have established downward cohort trends as characterizing religious change. We examine potential mechanisms by assessing cultural participation and secular engagement during the formative period of one cohort. We provide estimates of active and nominal religiosity, nonreligion and religious belief for those born between 1933 and 1942, using multiple surveys fielded between 1957 and 2018. We model the association between religiosity and secular cultural and social participation for this cohort in 1957, then examine how cultural socialization in childhood relates to religiosity in their later adulthood using surveys fielded between 2005 and 2007. Increased secular competition is found to be associated with less active religiosity. These trends were underpinned by an ethic of increasing autonomy for the young. We conclude by affirming the link between increasing secular competition, long‐run modernization, and changing cultural socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent has the growth of Evangelicalism in Latin America contributed to political participation across the region? A number of scholars of religion and politics in the United States have suggested that Evangelicalism promotes the development of civic skills necessary for political engagement, while the Catholic Church, due to its hierarchical structure, provides fewer opportunities for skill acquisition. In this paper, we apply this debate to Latin America to test whether civic skills developed in Catholic and Protestant church activities lead to differential participation rates in 18 countries. We utilize the 2014 Pew Religion in Latin America survey to test these effects, and find that Protestant churches do indeed promote skill‐developing activities at higher rates, but that Catholics, when involved, are more likely to translate this religious participation into political action. We conclude that political scientists must better understand the organizational role of religion in promoting political engagement worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While traditional masculinity and fathering behaviors are seemingly associated, few studies have considered the conditions under which masculine norms may influence fathers' behavior. Religiosity is an important factor to consider, given its association with both the endorsement of traditional gender attitudes and father involvement. This paper addresses the independent effects of traditional masculine norms and religiosity on fathering behaviors and considers whether religiosity moderates the relationship between masculinity and men's parenting behaviors. Using a national sample of fathers with children aged 2–17 in the United States, the results suggest that masculinity is negatively associated with father involvement, while religiosity is positively associated with father involvement. Yet, both highly masculine and highly religious fathers are more likely to engage in harsh discipline. Moreover, results suggest that religiosity attenuates the negative relationship between masculinity and active father involvement, while exacerbating the positive relationship between masculinity and harsh punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses papers published within the issue including one on health-care professionals' encounters with religion, another on who nurses perceive and include spiritually significant content in their workplace experiences, and the relationship between religiosity and obesity.