Changing perceived importance of religion in mainland China, 1990–2012: An age-period- cohort analysis

The comprehensive social reform and relaxation of religious regulation in mainland China have encouraged scholars to propose a revival thesis of religion, predicting a rising prevalence of religious adherence in the Reform Era. This study extends the revival thesis by focusing attention on people's subjective religiosity, and investigates age, period, and cohort effects on the transition in perceived importance of religion from 1990 to 2012. Capitalizing on the repeated cross-sectional data of the China sample in the World Values Survey, this study shows that (1) The senior population, relative to the younger counterpart, attaches greater importance to religion. (2) The net period effect suggests that Chinese citizens' perceived importance of religion follows an upward trend by the early 2000s, but no significant growth is detected henceforward. (3) The cohorts who experienced the anti-religion Mao's Era in their adolescent life course stage have an evidently lower probability of viewing religion to be important, in relation to the cohorts of the Reform Era. Theoretical implications of the empirical age-period-cohort patterns for the religious economies theory and change of Chinese religious landscape are discussed.     

Women's Access to Property: A Comparative Study on Islamic and Kemalist Women in Turkey

This article uses a comparative approach to discuss women's access to property using evidence collected from field research conducted on two distinct communities of Istanbul: one secular and one Islamic. The two groups of women possess distinctly different views of the world and how it is organized. This is particularly the case concerning gender where secular women put forth a view rooted in the sameness of the genders where the Islamic women were clear in their commitment to the idea of difference. These attitudes toward the equality and difference of the genders structures the relations of these women to property and the process of inheritance.     

Taken in by the numbers game: the globalization of a religious ‘illusio’ and ‘doxa’ in nineteenth-century evangelical missions to India

While the Bourdieusian concepts of capital and relational configurations of positions and position-takings have recently been fruitfully employed to theorize global fields, this paper argues that the concepts of illusio and doxa are especially conducive to analyzing the globalization of a field as an expansion into and transformation of formerly independent national arenas. In deploying the concept of illusio as a (quasi-libidinous) investment in the game, globalization is here first and foremost framed as a process in which more and more actors in various contexts ‘succumb’ to specific field logics that orient them to transnational structures. By emphasizing the concept of doxa as the taken-for-granted fundamentals of a field, the paper furthermore calls attention to the mechanisms that help forge and globalize the tacit presuppositions and shared ontologies on which such logics build. Focusing on a field of global Christian missions that emerged during the nineteenth century, the paper illustrates how its competitive logic of proselytization was introduced into the religious arena of India. It highlights how Western notions of religion gained ground among local traditions and pulled them into a game in which numerical relations of adherents mattered.     

Piety over Protest: Cognitive Liberation and Deflected Collective Action in Central India

Cognitive liberation is often treated in the social movements literature as a mediating factor through which political opportunities and mobilizing structures generate protest. This paper unpacks multiple dimensions of cognitive liberation and finds that they may operate in tension with one another. Building on scholarship that focuses on subjective factors in social movements, the paper examines the case of the Korku, an oppressed indigenous community in central India, who choose not to protest despite the presence of several dimensions of cognitive liberation. Rather than engage in collective political action, the Korku’s grievances are deflected toward depoliticized religious goals. The Korku seek communal improvement through Hindu piety in a context of the Hindutva cultural-nationalist ideology, rather than protest against the encroachment of this ideology on their community.     

“Still Looking for My Jonathan”: Gay Black Men's Management of Religious and Sexual Identity Conflicts

This article looks at homosexual Black men who are heavily involved in fundamentalist African-American churches. These men describe themselves as “out as same-sex loving individuals” even though the messages preached by their church leaders and the doctrines of their churches are, at the very least, heterosexist, but more likely to be stridently anti-homosexuality. Not only do these men attend the churches they are parts of, but they are viewed as leaders in these churches in positions ranging from associate pastor to director of facilities management. The study uses structured interviews to understand how these men manage the conflict between a committed gay identity and a strong religious identity that says the two cannot coexist.     

Religion in the Lives of Older Women Serving Life in Prison

This exploratory qualitative study examined the roles of religiousness in the lives of 21 older women (mean age = 63) serving life sentences in one southern state. Based on survey and focus group methodology, several themes emerged as important focal points, including early religious experiences prior to incarceration, imprisonment and religious doubt, participation in formal and informal religious activities, and use of religion in coping with stressors such as interpersonal relationships, trauma, and health statuses. Irrespective of their religious upbringing, all participants agreed that religiosity/spirituality played a key role in their ability to cope with their prison experience as well as for maintaining hope and the opportunity for release.     

Translating Spirituality: Universalism and Particularism in the Diffusion of Spiritual Care from the United States to Israel

Research on the transnational diffusion of ideas and practices shows how cultural objects go through translation, adaptation, and vernacularization when implemented in new localities. Less attention is given to the translators themselves and their heterogeneous and often conflicting visions. Drawing on the notion of transnational social fields (TSF s), this article investigates how cultural objects get vernacularized differently in different parts of the TSF , demonstrating how processes of translation reflect larger social and political struggles over questions of identity. As a case study, we focus on the attempt of actors from Israel and the United States to institutionalize spiritual care in Israeli health‐care organizations. The analysis reveals how spiritual care functioned as a porous cultural object, open to a wide range of interpretations and debates. While actors in New York saw in spiritual care the opportunity to bridge to Israeli Jews and create a global Jewish identity, Israeli actors split between using spiritual care as a vehicle for creating a local Israeli Jewish identity and seeing in spiritual care the opportunity to establish universal identities, broader than the Jewish one. The disagreement and conflicts between the groups influenced the translation process, turning it into a contentious struggle that involved different positions on the continuum between particularism and universalism.     

克吕尼运动的性质及其与格列高利改革的关系

本文旨在考察克吕尼运动的性质及其与格列高利改革的关系。作为中世纪欧洲集权尝试的开端,克吕尼运动和格列高利改革分别指向集权的两个基本面,即道德方面和政治方面。克吕尼运动在本质上是一场道德革新运动,其成功关键在于将集权作为道德革新的基本手段。格列高利改革将克吕尼的经验拓展至政治领域,一反遁世离俗的本尼迪克式理想,要求按照基督教原则改造现实世界,从而奠定了12、13世纪政教斗争的基本逻辑。一方面,克吕尼运动为格列高利改革提供了思想条件和技术手段;另一方面,克吕尼运动始终将自己约束在道德革新领域。究其原因,它的理想本质上是本尼迪克式的。     

宗教极端主义研究概要

宗教极端主义严重影响当今社会发展。本文正本清源 ,探讨了宗教极端主义的定义、本质、危害等问题 ,并对如何消解宗教极端主义提出了建议。     

略论宗教在社会主义和谐社会建设中的积极作用

构建社会主义和谐社会是一项浩繁的事业,需要社会各界共同奋斗。宗教教义中蕴涵许多有关和谐的思想资源,我们应积极挖掘这些资源,采取多种方式和途径,动员信教群众努力为建设社会主义和谐社会做出贡献。