God Knows
Whatever happened to new atheism? The rise and fall of the U.S. atheist movement
Steve Kettell
Politics and Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
The first decade of the twenty-first century saw the rise of a phenomenon known as new atheism. In recent years the visibility of new atheism has waned, but scholarly research into the causes of this decline remain limited. This paper examines the rise and fall of new atheism within the broader context of the U.S. atheist movement. Employing the conceptual framework of the social movement lifecycle, the analysis shows how the trajectory of the movement was shaped by its internal organisational challenges as well as the wider political and cultural landscape. While the early atheist movement was able to leverage internet technology and effectively use 'atheism' as an empty signifier to thrive in a hostile environment, growing conflicts over the aims and direction of the movement, fuelled in part by the growth of identity politics as part of the wider culture wars, led to an increasingly bitter factionalism that drove the movement apart.
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Fellowship in the Fiery Furnace: A Research Note on How Christian Persecution Beliefs Transcend Racial Divides
Brooklyn Walker, Paul Djupe & Brian Calfano
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study aims to investigate the relationship between Christian persecution beliefs (CPBs) and race. Existing CPB research has asserted that CPBs constitute a socially appropriate tool to signal White advocacy, but much of this research has centered on White respondents. Utilizing an original dataset with oversamples of Black and Latino Christians, we demonstrate that Black Christians are most likely to adopt CPBs (not White Christians); that the relationship between common measures of racial social identity and CPBs does not vary by the racial group; that the same underlying religion variables predict CPBs in similar ways across the racial group; that CPBs predict support for religious exemptions for all racial groups, even when those exemptions protect racial discrimination; and that CPBs are linked to greater perception of discrimination faced by racial others. We conclude that the relationship between CPBs and racial hierarchies is more complicated than previously understood.
Separation of Church and State Curricula? Examining Public and Religious Private School Textbooks
Anjali Adukia & Emileigh Harrison
NBER Working Paper, May 2025
Abstract:
Curricula impart knowledge, instill values, and shape collective memory. Despite growing public funding for religious schools through U.S. school choice programs, little is known about what they teach. We examine textbooks from public schools, religious private schools, and home schools, applying computational methods -- including AI tools -- to measure the presence and portrayal of people, topics, and values over time. Despite narratives of political polarization, our findings reveal few meaningful differences between public school textbooks from Texas and California. However, religious school textbooks have less female representation, feature lighter-skinned individuals, and portray topics like evolution and religion differently. Over one-third of pages in each collection convey character values, with a higher proportion in religious school textbooks. Important similarities also emerge: all textbook collections rarely include LGBTQIA+ discussion, portray females in more positive but less active or powerful contexts than males, and depict the U.S. founding era and slavery in similar contexts.
Competition Within the Church: Market Entry and the Rise of Traditional Catholicism in the United States
Ennio Piano, Benjamin Bauer & Clara Piano
Kyklos, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Catholic Church enacted broad reforms after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), notably to the liturgies that Catholics must attend every Sunday. However, there has been a revival of pre-Vatican II practices recently, such as the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). We explore the role played in this resurgence by the entry of a traditionalist Catholic competitor (the Society of Saint Pius X) in the market for religious services. Using data from the continental United States, we show that the presence of SSPX chapels significantly increases the availability of TLMs, particularly on Sundays when attendance at a Mass is required. We also find evidence that the effect is strongest at a local level and that it has intensified over time, possibly due to Pope Benedict XVI's liberalization of TLM celebrations in 2007.
Value endorsement among Protestants and Catholics within and between countries in Europe: Implications for individualism
Allon Vishkin, Dov Cohen & Shinobu Kitayama
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Protestantism, as opposed to Catholicism, is widely seen as having contributed to the rise of Western individualism. However, little is known about potential value differences between these two branches of Christianity in contemporary Europe. In the current work, we examined patterns of value endorsement among current and former Protestants and Catholics within and between 20 European countries using data from the European Social Survey (N = 163,586). Results reveal that within a given country, Protestants are more likely to endorse self-transcendence values than Catholics are, and these findings held when controlling for religiosity, differences in socioeconomic status, and differences in religious de-identification. Surprisingly, differences between Protestants and Catholics in value endorsement were sometimes larger among less (vs. more) religious respondents and were detectable even among former Protestants and Catholics, with former Protestants resembling religious respondents more than former Catholics did. Results also reveal that some Protestant-Catholic differences are consistent across cultures, whereas others -- principally on the dimension of openness to change versus conservation -- are moderated by which group is the majority heritage. We discuss the possible contribution of Protestantism to Western individualism's universalistic orientation, considering the association between Protestantism and self-transcendence values.
Monks Behaving Badly: Explaining Buddhist Violence in Asia
Nilay Saiya & Stuti Manchanda
International Security, Spring 2025, Pages 119-159
Abstract:
The dramatic rise in religious violence across the globe since the end of the Cold War has motivated scholars to try to explain violent religion-related extremism. Much of the attention to religious violence in the modern world focuses on Islam. Of the world's major faith traditions, Buddhism is most commonly and widely associated with peace, tolerance, and compassion. Yet Buddhism, like every other great religion, has a violent side. While scholars acknowledge violence within Buddhism, few have explored why Buddhism becomes violent in some places but not others. We develop a structural explanation for Buddhist violence. Our central claim is that Buddhist violence tends to occur in countries where Buddhism and the state are closely intertwined. We test this theory using both a statistical analysis of Buddhist violence in Buddhist-majority and Buddhist-plural countries and case studies of Buddhist violence (or lack thereof) in Myanmar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Our findings show that religion-state integration emboldens Buddhist vigilantes to attack religious minorities. Our analysis suggests that states can take specific actions to mitigate the risk of violent religious extremism.
Endogenous public health responses in Orthodox Jewish communities during the COVID-19 pandemic
Rachael Behr LaRose et al.
Journal of Institutional Economics, May 2025
Abstract:
Endogenous public health responses include the individual behaviours, community-based organizational responses, and informal rules that resolve economic problems during public health crises. We explore the relevance of endogenous responses in Orthodox Jewish communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyse Orthodox newspapers in New York City and find that (a) rabbis advised their communities on how to stay healthy and observant to their religious beliefs; (b) rabbinical councils and advisory boards provided private, public health guidance; (c) private, Jewish ambulatory services provided religiously sensitive healthcare; (d) Orthodox Jewish schools privately provided public health services; and (e) community members altered religious rules, rituals, and traditions to mitigate the spread of the virus. While these responses did not occur seamlessly or without conflict, the Orthodox community worked diligently to provide public health services to remain healthy while also observing religious traditions. Our paper provides shows how communities develop endogenous public health responses during crises.
Karma rewards me and punishes you: Self-other divergences in karma beliefs
Cindel White, Atlee Lauder & Mina Aryaie
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many people apply supernatural explanations to understand the cause of important positive and negative life events, but specific types of events are more likely to evoke specific supernatural explanations that best satisfy various personal motives. We test the hypothesis that believers will differ in their willingness to apply karmic explanations to their own experiences compared to the experiences of other people, such that they are more willing to explain their own positive experiences as caused by their own karmic merit (to satisfy self-enhancement motives), while being more willing to explain other people's negative experiences as karmic punishment for others' misdeeds (to satisfy justice motives). In three studies (total N = 2,041), we ask participants to recall events believed to have been caused by karma in their own life and events believed to have been caused by karma in the lives of other people, and we code whether these descriptions of karma-caused events are primarily positive or negative, using a combination of human coders, sentiment analysis, and participants' self-reported evaluations of the events. Results consistently show that positive experiences are more likely to come to mind when they think about how karma influences their own life, but negative experiences are more likely when thinking about other's karma, although this difference was weaker in Singapore and India than in the United States. Results are consistent with predicted self-enhancement biases in karmic attributions and show how personal motivations predict willingness to adopt supernatural explanations for specific life events.
Belief in Creation in the Image of God Violates the Individualizing-Binding Dichotomy of Moral Foundations
Allon Vishkin, Yochanan Bigman & Jeremy Ginges
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, June 2025, Pages 380-401
Abstract:
Moral foundations theory proposes that there are two types of moral domains: the individualizing domain, which relates to individual welfare (comprising harm and fairness foundations), and the binding domain, which relates to communal and spiritual welfare (comprising loyalty, authority, and purity foundations). In this investigation, we demonstrate that this distinction is not universal. Specifically, across five studies (total N = 1,211) conducted among Jews in Israel and Christians in the United States, we show that the core religious belief that people are created in the image of God is associated not only with purity/divinity values that are typically considered to be part of the binding domain but also with the individualizing moral domain. In two correlational studies, we find that this belief is highly correlated with religiosity but that it predicts greater endorsement of the individualizing moral domain (Studies 1-2). Two experimental studies further establish that this belief is associated with endorsing the individualizing moral domain and the moral foundation of purity, but not the communal foundations (Studies 3-4). Finally, in Study 5, we demonstrate that these experimental findings are not driven by belief in God. We conclude that the distinction between individualizing and binding moral domains is more culturally contingent than previously believed. We discuss the broader implications of the belief in creation in the image of God for understanding moral judgments pertaining to human dignity.