Fear of God
Demonic Influence: The Negative Mental Health Effects of Belief in Demons
Fanhao Nie & Daniel Olson
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many religious traditions include a belief in the reality of demonic beings and evil powers. Previous research demonstrates that comforting beliefs, such as believing in an afterlife, can benefit mental health, but less is known about the potentially negative mental health effects of belief in evil supernatural powers. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that among young adults, believing in demons is one of the strongest (negative) predictors of mental health. More importantly, using three waves of the National Study of Youth and Religion and a cross-lagged structural equation model, we find that belief in demons can lead to lowered mental health in later waves but low mental health does not lead to greater belief in demons. In fact, when predicting changes in mental health from wave 2 to wave 3 of the study, the negative effect size of belief in demons on mental health is larger in magnitude than all other religion-related predictors.
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From Existential to Social Understandings of Risk: Examining Gender Differences in Nonreligion
Penny Edgell, Jacqui Frost & Evan Stewart
Social Currents, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across many social contexts, women are found to be more religious than men. Risk preference theory proposes that women are less likely than men to accept the existential risks associated with nonbelief. Building on previous critiques of this theory, we argue that the idea of risk is relevant to understanding the relationship between gender and religiosity if risk is understood not as existential, but as social. The research on existential risk focuses on religious identification as solely a matter of belief; as part of the movement away from this cognitivist bias, we develop the concept of social risk to theorize the ways that social location and differential levels of power and privilege influence women's nonreligious choices. We show that women's nonreligious preferences in many ways mirror those of other marginalized groups, including nonwhites and the less educated. We argue that nonreligion is socially risky, that atheism is more socially risky than other forms of nonreligion, and that women and members of other marginalized groups avoid the most socially risky forms of nonreligion.
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Reconciling the God and Gender Gaps: The Influence of Women in Church Politics
Andre Audette, Maryann Kwakwa & Christopher Weaver
Politics, Groups, and Identities, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social scientists have long recognized women as being both more religious and more liberal than men. Indeed, men have been disaffiliating from churches and the Democratic Party at higher rates than women for several decades. Moreover, we show evidence to suggest that churchgoing women, while less liberal than women in the general population, are nevertheless more liberal than churchgoing men. Given these trends, one might expect churches to have become more liberal in response to these changing demographics. However, using nationally representative data of American congregations and their adherents, we show that churches with a higher percentage of female congregants are actually more conservative. We suggest that the institutional structure of churches limits the ideological influence and contributions of women within the church community. Specifically, women are often excluded formally or informally from decision-making leadership positions in the church. When women are allowed greater access to leadership positions, however, we find that congregations do tend to be less politically conservative. These findings suggest that churches and other civic organizations, which are major direct and indirect political actors, may be insulated from changes in the partisan or ideological makeup of their membership through their allocation of important leadership roles.
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Roger Baumann
Sociology of Religion, Winter 2016, Pages 359-385
Abstract:
How do religion and race affect political engagement in black churches? Studies of black church-based politics typically use religious frameworks of emancipation in the form of social gospels, associating politically engaged groups with socially liberal politics and movements for racial justice. In contrast, this article draws on two years of fieldwork as well as interviews with clergy and laity to explain how non-emancipatory religious frameworks and politically conservative religious activism operate in black churches. Using the case of African American Christian Zionism, which draws on racial and religious motivations to foster political support for the State of Israel, this article argues for increased attention to theologically and politically conservative social movements within black churches. The discourse of this movement provides an instructive example of how black church political engagement is increasingly focusing on alternative motivations and social solidarities, rather than exclusively operating in contexts that emphasize racial justice and emancipation.
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M.N. Barringer & David Gay
Sociological Inquiry, February 2017, Pages 75-96
Abstract:
This article analyzes the impact of religion on reported levels of subjective well-being (general happiness) among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults. Although previous studies find religious affiliation to be a significant predictor of subjective well-being among the general population in the United States, limited quantitative research investigates general happiness among sexual and gender minorities. This study augments the existing literature by using a national survey of LGBT adults conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2013. The results show that religious affiliation is a significant predictor of LGBT individuals' happiness. LGBT individuals who identify as Catholic, agnostic or atheist, or with no particular religious affiliation report lower levels of happiness compared to mainline Protestants. Surprisingly, no significant differences are found between mainline Protestants (whose church doctrine often accepts same-sex relations) and evangelical Protestants (whose church doctrine often condemns same-sex relations). In addition, income is the only control variable that affects general happiness. Our analysis reveals interesting differences in the determinants of subjective well-being between the LGBT and general population.
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The Determinants of Religious Radicalization: Evidence from Kenya
Anselm Rink & Kunaal Sharma
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
A variety of theories attempt to explain why some individuals radicalize along religious lines. Few studies, however, have jointly put these diverse hypotheses under empirical scrutiny. Focusing on Muslim-Christian tensions in Kenya, we distill salient micro-, meso-, and macro-level hypotheses that try to account for the recent spike in religious radicalization. We use an empirical strategy that compares survey evidence from Christian and Muslim respondents with differing degrees of religious radicalization. We find no evidence that radicalization is predicted by macro-level political or economic grievances. Rather, radicalization is strongly associated with individual-level psychological trauma, including historically troubled social relations, and process-oriented factors, particularly religious identification and exposure to radical networks. The findings point to a model of radicalization as an individual-level process that is largely unaffected by macro-level influences. As such, radicalization is better understood in a relational, idea-driven framework as opposed to a macro-level structural approach.
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The Long-Run Effects of Missionary Orders in Mexico
Maria Waldinger
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the long-run effects of different Catholic missionary orders in colonial Mexico on educational outcomes and Catholicism. The main missionary orders in colonial Mexico were all Catholic, but they belonged to different monastic traditions and adhered to different values. Mendicant orders were committed to poverty and sought to reduce social inequality in colonial Mexico by educating the native population. The Jesuit order, by contrast, focused educational efforts on the colony's elite in the city centers, rather than on the native population in rural mission areas. Using a newly constructed data set of the locations of 1,145 missions in colonial Mexico, I test whether long-run development outcomes differ among areas that had Mendicant missions, Jesuit missions, or no missions. Results indicate that areas with historical Mendicant missions have higher present-day literacy rates, and higher rates of educational attainment at primary, secondary and post-secondary levels than regions without a mission. Results show that the share of Catholics is higher in regions where Catholic missions of any kind were a historical present. Additional results suggest that missionaries may have affected long-term development by impacting people's access to and valuation of education.
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Sarah Shah, John Bartkowski & Xiaohe Xu
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
God imagery has been shown to have a profound influence on a diverse array of attitudes and behaviors. Research has also underscored the religious antecedents of traditionalist gender ideologies. This study integrates these parallel literatures by examining the degree to which gendered God imagery is a transposable schema that is associated with attitudes toward mothers' paid labor force participation. We hypothesize that otherworldly schemas predicated on gender difference - namely, paternal and maternal images of God - have this-worldly consequences by reinforcing opposition to mothers' workforce participation. Analyses of General Social Survey data reveal strong support for this hypothesis. The evidence also demonstrates that paternal God images produce particularly robust and persistent opposition to mothers' labor force participation net of other factors. Additional hypotheses about the interaction effects exhibited by gendered God imagery, prayer, and worship service attendance are modestly supported. We conclude by discussing our study's implications and outlining directions for future research.
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The Effects of Extreme Rituals on Moral Behavior: The Performers-Observers Gap Hypothesis
Panagiotis Mitkidis et al.
Journal of Economic Psychology, April 2017, Pages 1-7
Abstract:
Religious rituals are found all over the world. Some cultures engage in extreme religious rituals in which individuals take on forms of bodily harm to demonstrate their devotion. Such rituals entail excessive costs in terms of physical pain and effort, but the equivalent societal benefits remain unclear. The field experiment reported here examined the interplay between extreme rituals and moral behavior. Using a die-roll task to measure honest behavior, we tested whether engaging or observing others engaging in extreme ritual activities affects subsequent moral behavior. Strikingly, the results showed that extreme rituals promote moral behavior among ritual observers, but not among ritual performers. The discussion centres on the moral effects of rituals within the broader social context in which they occur. Extreme religious rituals appear to have a moral cleansing effect on the numerous individuals observing the rituals, which may imply that these rituals evolved to advance and maintain moral societies.
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David Feldman, Ian Fischer & Robert Gressis
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is commonly reasoned that religious belief moderates death anxiety and aids in coping with loss. However, a philosophical perspective known as meta-atheism includes the claim that avowed religious believers grieve deaths and experience death anxiety as intensely as avowed atheists. Thus, we report a study comparing religious believers and nonbelievers on measures of death anxiety and grief. We further investigated the relationships between certain religious beliefs (views of God, afterlife belief, religious orientation) and death anxiety, as well as both painful grief reactions and grief-related growth. We surveyed 101 participants across the United States, ranging in age (19 to 57), education, and ethnicity. Participants avowing some form of religious belief, in comparison to those not, did not demonstrate lower levels of death anxiety. They did, however, display higher levels of a certain type of death acceptance. Additionally, those professing belief reported less grief and greater growth in response to loss. Greater afterlife belief was not associated with less grief; however, it was associated with both greater grief-related growth and lower death anxiety.
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Jeremy Uecker & Kyle Longest
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social scientists know very little about the consequences of exposure to scientific knowledge and holding different perspectives on science and religion for individuals' religious lives. Drawing on secularization and post-secular theories, we develop and test several hypotheses about the relationships among exposure to scientific knowledge, perspectives on religion and science, and religious commitment using panel data from the National Study of Youth and Religion. Our findings indicate that religious faith is strongest among young adults who: (1) accommodate scientific knowledge into their religious perspective, or (2) reject scientific knowledge that directly contradicts their religious beliefs about the origins of the world. Young adults are also more likely to have lower religious commitment when they view science and religion as independent institutions, lending support to secularization ideas about how social differentiation secularizes individuals. We further find that mere exposure to scientific knowledge, in terms of majoring in biology or acknowledging conflict between the teachings of religion and science, is usually not sufficient to undermine religious commitment.
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Pandej Chintrakarn, Shenghui Tong & Pornsit Jiraporn
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research shows that religious piety is linked to honesty and risk-aversion. Religious piety alleviates the agency conflict by lessening the motivation for managers to exploit shareholders. Because of its role in mitigating the agency conflict, we argue that religious piety influences corporate governance arrangements. We exploit the variation in religious piety across U.S. counties and show that religious piety significantly influences the probability that a firm has an entrenched (staggered) board of directors. In particular, firms located in an area with stronger religious piety are significantly less likely to have a staggered board. This negative effect, however, is significant only when the degree of religiosity is higher than a certain threshold. Further analysis reveals that our results are unlikely confounded by endogeneity. Our results are especially interesting as they demonstrate that non-financial attributes, such as religious piety, has a significant influence on one of the most crucial governance mechanisms, i.e. the board of directors.
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Do Progressive Social Norms Affect Economic Outcomes? Evidence from Corporate Takeovers
Yangyang Chen et al.
Journal of Empirical Finance, March 2017, Pages 76-95
Abstract:
This paper investigates how religion-induced attitudes toward change and diversity affect corporate acquisition decisions. By studying the variation in religious adherence across U.S. counties, we find that acquirer announcement returns and total synergy are larger in counties in which progressive religious denominations are popular. In contrast, conservative religious denominations affect neither acquirer announcement returns nor total synergies. Our evidence indicates that religion-induced social norms are an important driver of large corporate transactions, while various religious denominations affect corporate outcomes differently.
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Robert Lytle & Tusty ten Bensel
Criminal Justice Studies, Fall 2016, Pages 309-324
Abstract:
Christian fundamentalism has often been linked to death penalty support, despite mixed results across more than a decade of empirical studies. More recently, a line of research has emerged that has called for a reconceptualization of fundamentalism as harsh and rigid, instead of being more a multifaceted concept. In the spirit of this call, we investigated the relative importance of Christian fundamentalism on death penalty attitudes when compared with non-religious social attitudes. Using 1,560 respondents from the 2008 General Social Survey data, we found self-identified Christian fundamentalism, though not biblical literalism or religious denomination, remained a significant predictor of death penalty attitudes when attitudes toward LGBT marriage equality were included in the model. Unexpectedly, white women who endorsed LGBT marriage equality were also more likely to support the death penalty. Based on our findings, we discuss implications and areas for future research.