Search

This paper reflects on the vocation or 'calling' of the researcher in the sociology of religion in the light of his experiences of researching transformations in English Catholicism in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It takes as its starting point Weber's two essays. A consideration of religious perspectives on the lay vocation leads to an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of insider research. The paper reflects on research mistakes, threats and attempts to co-opt the researcher, unexpected surprises and serendipity, and the need for the social scientist to retain control of his/her research. It concludes with inspiration from Havel that the calling of the sociological researcher is socially important and urges renewed commitment to seeking with integrity the extension of certified knowledge and the demystification of powerful institutional structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we will report some of the findings of a study of the rise and fall of the Young Christian Worker movement in England and Wales. From its origins in the industrial north in the 1930s, the movement reached its peak in the early 1950s. Since then it has declined and yet many of the current generation of Catholic activists were strongly influenced by its ideology, ecclesiology, and inductive approach to finding Christian responses to social issues. We explore from a social movement perspective what social factors contributed to its early growth. The context for its decline in recent decades are the major post-war social and post-Vatican religious changes which have transformed English Catholicism. We argue that the two stages of the decline correspond closely to the passage through adolescence and the young adult years of two successive generations in the post-war years, the 'baby boomers' and the 'baby busters'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a wide range of researches to stress the importance of social context to the sociological understanding of religious experiences. It argues that individualistic definitions fail to take into account real group experiences such as those resulting from the reforms of Vatican II. For the sociologist, it is important to explore general patterns of group experiences and the meanings attributed to them. The paper discusses some of the methodological and conceptual problems in this area before considering evidence for the patterning of religious experience according to differences of generation, gender, class, level of urbanization, institutional involvement, and status inconsistency. The paper concludes by locating religious experiences in the context of modernity. In contrast to related theories of secularization, it draws attention to the recent work of Hervieu-Léger which suggests that utopian future expectations create space which can only be met by new forms of religious experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study on the typology of English Catholics. In order to explore the extent of heterogeneity among English Catholics secondary analysis has been carried out on the data from the 1978 survey of Roman Catholics in England and Wales. The sample comprised 1001 self-identifying Catholics together with a further twenty-two who, though no longer identifying themselves as Catholics, reported that they bad been baptized as one. In order to obtain a representative sample of Catholics aged 15 and over quota controls for age, sex and Mass attendance frequency were applied at each of 105 sampling points throughout England and Wales. The quotas were based on the findings of ongoing Gallup omnibus surveys. Random sampling was not possible in this first national survey of the dispersed Catholic minority because it would have been prohibitively expensive. In the event the achieved sample overrepresented the higher status groups and those with longer educational experiences. In the analyses which follow these have been allowed for by weighting the data according to the Gallup omnibus Mass attendance and socio-economic status data.

This paper describes an attempt to construct a typology of progressive Catholics using data obtained from a survey of the delegates to the 1980 National Pastoral Congress of English Catholics eighteen months after the Congress. Progressivism is regarded as the espousal of the new elements of religious ideology and pastoral emphases which have emerged since the Second Vatican Council.
Following earlier attempts using smallest space analysis and factor analysis, this paper describes the use of cluster analysis to identify distinct groups of individuals and discriminant analysis to identify the separate dimensions which distinguish between the clusters. Seven dusters ware identified in terms of six discriminant functions. An analysis of the social and religious characteristics of the seven types indicated that there was no simple unidimensional scale of progressivism. The paper concludes with some suggestions for a more comprehensive classification of progressive Catholics which might be explored in the case of other or more representative samples.
This paper set out to construct a typology of progressive Catholics using data from a survey of delegates to the National Pastoral Congress. Following preliminary investigations using smallest space analysis and factor analysis, cluster analysis was employed to identify seven types of respondents with characteristics defined by six discriminant functions which were found to be theoretically meaningful. The social and religious characteristics of the seven dusters indicate that they may be regarded as seven distinct types of progressive. The typology that resulted from this study (Table 3) indicates that only seven of a possible 64 combinations are relevant for this particular sample. There is no reason to suppose that this would be the case for other samples, such as a nationally representative sample of English or American or Australian Catholics. However, on the basis of the present research, a number of key... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports some of the findings from a study of social and religious change with random samples of both Catholic and non-Catholic electors in four Roman Catholic parishes in England in the mid-1970s. The hypothesis that, as a result of the post-war expansion of educational provision in Britain, Catholics, with their largely urban, immigrant, working class origins, would have experienced a 'mobility momentum' relative to the rest of the population, was not supported. Social mobility experiences were shown to be less important than parish effects on sexual morality and the stable middle class were less likely than other groups to defer to authority. The analysis of attitudes to contraception and to recent liturgical changes indicated that attitudes to religious authority were being transformed. There was little evidence that the shifts of religious ideology legitimated by the Second Vatican Council had any salience for Catholics generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationships between religion, environmental and other values and voluntary activities using the data from the 1990 European Values Surveys (EVS). Previous work on these data had suggested that environmental concern is much more influenced by demographic characteristics such as education and income than by religious values. The way in which religious identities and convictions and, particularly, interpretations of scriptural passages are related to environmental concerns is a controversial one. Various sources suggest that the relationship between religion and environmentalist views among the populations of advanced industrialist societies is unclear. The 1990 EVS provides the opportunity to explore some of these relationships. This paper examines, using path analysis, the strength of both an individual Roman Catholic identity and a Roman Catholic national context on environmental values and propensity to appropriate action in pursuit of environmental concerns. It shows whether Catholics have internalized a sense of stewardship, which is reflected in higher levels of environmental concerns, in contrast to Protestants who place greater emphasis on economic growth, production as an end rather than a means, and mastery over nature.

This article examines the marginalization of British Catholics active both in the Church and in the Labour movement. On the one hand such Catholics often have to face the traditional clerical suspicion of socialism with its imputed associations with militant atheism and Marxist materialism. On the other hand, within the Labour movement there have been suspicions of the resistance of Catholics to radical social change and their alleged reactionary positions in the matter of women's rights. Two Catholic Members of the Parliament have complained that though they received some support for their political involvement from individuals, in the main they did not feel they received support in the vocation from the institutional Church. Both testified to the political difficulties which they had and the pressures to which they had been subjected in attempts to amend abortion legislation. Such findings lend credence to the hypothesis that Catholics active both in the Church and in politics experience a sense of marginality in both institutional spheres. As such, Catholics grapple with the sometimes conflicting demands of the social worlds of the Catholic Church and the Labour movement and they experience psychological uncertainty.

Remarkably little is known about the processes and extent of educational and occupational assimilation, convergence of social mobility experiences and patterns of intermarriage of England's largest immigrant community, the Irish. In this paper assimilation is regarded as a process in which both cultural and structural differences between the immigrant group and the indigenous population are progressively reduced over an extended period of time. Using nationally representative data from the General Household Surveys of 1979 and 1980, first and second generation immigrants from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were compared with a control sample of 'English', with all analyses run separately for men and women. It is concluded that, while there is generally a substantial measure of assimilation of the Irish in England by the second generation, there are important differences between immigrants from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland -- the former showing much higher levels of educational and occupational achievement by the second generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Prior The Bible and Colonialism: A Moral Critique H.Douglas Buckwalter The Character and Purpose of Luke's Christology Paul N. Anderson The Christology of the Fourth Gospel Bruce J. Malina On the Genre and Message of Revelation: Star Visions and Sky Journeys R. P. H. Green (Ed) Augustine: ‘De Doctrina Christiana’ Duane W. H. Arnold and Pamela Bright (Eds) ‘De Doctrina Christiana’ Edward D. English (Eds) Reading and Wisdom. The ‘De Doctrina Christiana’ of Augustine in the Middle Ages Brian Stock Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge and the Ethics of Interpretation Rita Copeland (Ed) Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages F. A. C. Mantello and A. G. Rigg (Eds) Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide Toivo Holopainen Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century C. F. J. Martin On The Six Days of Creation: A Translation of the ‘Hexaemeron’ By Robert Grosseteste John Blair and Brian Golding (Eds) The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey Colin Flight The Bishops and Monks of Rochester, 1076–1214 Jeffrey F. Hamburger Nuns As Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent Craig R. Thompson Collected Works of Erasmus, Vols. 39–40: Colloquies Thomas M. Lucas Landmarking: City, Church and Jesuit Urban Strategy W. R. Ward (Ed) Parson and Parish in Eighteenth-Century Surrey: Replies to Bishops' Visitations Marek Inglot La Compagnia di Gesù nell'Impero Russo (1772–1820) e la sua parte nella restaurazione generale della Compagnia Noor Giovanni Mazhar Catholic Attitudes to Evolution in Nineteenth-Century Italian Literature David A. Dowland Nineteenth-Century Anglican Theological Training: The Redbrick Challenge Roberto Papini The Christian Democrat International Padraig Hogan and Kevin Williams (Eds) The Future of Religion in Irish Education Fergus Kerr Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity Willem B. Drees Religion, Science and Naturalism Richard Penaskovic Critical Thinking and the Academic Study of Religion Gerard Kelly Recognition: Advancing Ecumenical Thinking Letty M. Russell and J. Shannon Clarkson (Eds) Dictionary of Feminist Theologies Terence W. Tilley et al. Postmodern Theologies: The Challenge of Religious Diversity Kevin Boyle and Juliet Sheen (Eds) Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report Donald Nicholl Triumphs of the Spirit in Russia Aidan Nichols Rome and the Eastern Churches: A study in Schism David Schindler Heart of the World, Center of the Church Peter Byrne and Leslie Houlden (Eds) Companion Encyclopedia of Theology John Kekes Moral Wisdom and Good Lives R. Bracht Branham and M.-O. Goulet-Cazé The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy Arlene W. Saxonhouse Athenian Democracy: Modern Mythmakers and Ancient Theorists Roslyn Weiss Socrates Dissatisfied: An Analysis of Plato's ‘Crito’ T. K. Johansen Aristotle on the Sense-organs Anthony J. Lisska Aquinas's Theory of Natural Law [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]