Highly religious young Catholics in Northern Ireland: Renewing the Catholic landscape?

This article explores findings from a 2022 survey of students associated with the Catholic Chaplaincy at Queen's University, Belfast. It is the first study to investigate the beliefs, practices, and experiences of highly religious young Catholics in Northern Ireland. It presents survey findings on beliefs, practices, and influences on faith; dynamics of increased religiosity; and views on Church teachings on same sex relationships, euthanasia, sexual relationships, and abortion. Women are more likely to disagree with Church teachings on these issues than men. The survey confirms the importance of family socialization but finds that a substantial minority experience religious change at university. Respondents prioritize renewal but disagree on how to prompt it: some advocate greater ‘openness’ to women, LGBTQ+, and others perceived as marginalized; and others feel ‘evangelization’ should be emphasized. ‘Post-secular Catholicism’ is used as a foundation for reflections on religious persistence among Northern Ireland's young Catholics, raising questions about their potential role in renewing Ireland's Catholic landscape in light of the synodal process underway in the Church.     

Fighting Battles with History: The Novelist Louis Golding and the Story of the ‘Doomington Wanderer’

This article explores the writing of Louis Golding in the context of existing scholarship on the Anglo-Jewish novel. It assesses the importance of Golding's background and beliefs in shaping his fiction. Golding's views bridge the cultural gap between eastern European Jewish schtetl life and interwar British society. On one hand, he was a militant supporter of Jewish/non-Jewish intermarriage, of secular Judaism and religious freedom. At the same time his writing reveals a sustained belief in Jewish ‘race’ and Jewish spirituality. Golding's writing on ‘race’ will receive particular attention. Like so many other British Jews in the period, the author seems to have been caught between his desire to fight the racism of the Third Reich and his own confused ‘racial’ attitudes.     

The Authority of the Holy Revisited: Habermas, Religion, and Emancipatory Possibilities

This article argues that Jürgen Habermas's view of religion as anathema to rational critical discourse reflects his misunderstanding that religion comprises a monolithic and immutable body of dogma that is closed to reason. Illustrative data from Catholic history and theology and empirical data gathered from contemporary American Catholics are used to show the weaknesses in Habermas's negation of the possibility of a self-critical religious discourse. Specifically, I highlight the doctrinal differentiation within Catholicism, its longstanding theological emphasis on the coupling of faith and reason, institutional reflexivity, and the doctrinally reflexive reasoning that contemporary Catholics use in negotiating what might appear as "contradictory" identities (e.g., being gay or lesbian and Catholic). Although the data presented take issue with Habermas's disavowal of religion, the article shows that the practical relevance of doctrinal reasoning at both the institutional and the individual level vindicate Habermas's faith in the emancipatory potential of reasoned argumentation to advance participative equality.     

The message is the medium: immaterialism and McLuhan’s Poetic Excess

Against interpretations of Marshall McLuhan as philosophical materialist, I argue that Understanding Media and its tagline, the medium is the message, show McLuhan to be an immaterialist: a poetic, intuitive thinker, at least as interested in immaterial as in material aspects of the world. From a pragmatic perspective, or one requiring attention to both poetic and technical modes of understanding, McLuhan’s approach—offering a torrent of flashing insights and neglecting the process of empirically assessing these insights—is described as poetic excess. This is a double-edged sword, alienating many readers even as it inspires others. McLuhan’s poetic excess is a rhetorical reminder of the value and power of poetic thinking, and simultaneously of its insufficiency for the fullest understanding. Pleading that his poetic texts should be read rhetorically rather than literally, I argue we should forgive McLuhan’s worst affronts to technical, materialist rationality. McLuhan’s immaterialist epistemology, inseparable from the content of his insights, is a valuable part of his distinctive and foundational contribution to media studies.     

The Dean Pike Show: An Examination and Comparative Analysis of Bishop James A. Pike's 1950s Television Program

During the religious revival and television revolution of the 1950s, future Episcopal Bishop James Pike broadcast a live religious television program to a national audience from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, where he was then serving as Dean. By so doing, he joined evangelist Billy Graham and Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen as prominent church leaders of the day hosting their own TV shows. Together, these programs reflected varied strands of the American religious landscape in the 1950s. The article examines Pike's show, which focused on a discussion with guests of critical political, social and ethical issues facing the nation and church. It examines how the program reflected Pike's life-long ministry and identity as a High Church liberal, as well as Reinhold Niebuhr's theology. Further, the article compares the format, approach and content of Pike's show with those of Graham and Sheen, examining how each program's format derived from its featured cleric's theology and approach. It finds that Pike's show was distinctly more political, pragmatic and introspective than those of his fellow TV clerics.     

Religiosity as a predictor of students' political attitudes

This paper analyzes the relationship between students' level of actual religiosity and their sociodemographic characteristics, political orientation, and political attitudes. The paper is based on an online survey conducted at the University of Rijeka (N = 624) in 2021. The vast majority of our respondents (90%) received the three holy sacraments of initiation in their early childhood and attended Catholic religious education at school. The explanation of the significantly less actual religiosity of students is approached from the position of Pickel's contextualized theory of secularization. Relying on Voas and Day, a composite variable distinguishes highly religious students, moderately religious students, weakly religious students, and non-religious students on the basis of the respondents' positioning toward religious self-identification, beliefs, Church attendance, and the importance of religion in one's life. Statistically significant correlations between actual religiosity and political orientation were established. Very religious Catholic students, who are the least numerous and the least homogenous category, are more inclined to right-wing political orientation and reject ethno-nationalism/anti-multiculturalism less and accept clericalism more than other categories of students. In a broader sense, this study reveals that a large number of respondents distance themselves from religion and the Church at student age despite their experience of formal religious socialization at school age. Furthermore, the results suggest that the synergy of the liberalizing effect of education and the tolerant sociocultural atmosphere of an area reduces the influence of religiosity on the political attitudes and orientation of students.     

Black Catholicism and the Spirit of Weber

This essay reviews the background of the relatively recent phenomenon of black Catholicism in America and the empirical studies which have explored possible connections between Catholic affiliation among blacks and their changing patterns of secular status. The problem addressed is whether the tendency for Catholicism to be associated with high socioeconomic status among black Americans can be interpreted as the operation of a religious factor in a classic Weberian sense. By comparing black Catholicism to the historical case of Protestantism, it is shown that Catholicism may well have some implications for character structure, social disengagement, and mobility which warrant its designation as a religious factor in the black American experience.     

RELIGIOUS REFERENCE GROUPS AND THE PERSISTENCE OF NORMATIVE BEHAVIOR: AN EMPIRICAL TEST

Reference groups and significant others are vitally important in both the formation and the persistence or change of normative as well as deviant behavior patterns. Thus one's initial religious beliefs and behavior (or lack thereof) reflect the socializing influence of the family. However, the situation may change when young people leave home for education or work, as demonstrated by research that shows decreases in religious beliefs or church attendance when young people leave home to attend college. In contrast to the pattern whereby religiosity declines in a college or university environment, we maintain that students who develop close ties with others who are religious, especially in a highly religious community, will maintain the same patterns of high commitment developed in their families. Specifically, we hypothesize that religious beliefs and participation will be positively related to (1) parents' religious beliefs and practices and (2) current friends' religious beliefs and participation. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of college students living on campus (n = 339). The data support the argument that students' current religious beliefs and behavior are related to both their parents' religiosity and the reinforcing effects of the religiosity of their current friends.     

A Faith‐Based Advantage?

This study explored whether religiously affiliated nonprofit schools participating in Milwaukee's long‐standing school voucher program engage in more fundraising and perform better on academic indicators than nonsectarian nonprofit schools. The analysis of three years of organizational‐level voucher school data reveals that a higher percentage of religious affiliated schools engage in fundraising, and that religious schools affiliated with umbrella organizations have higher test score indicators than nonsectarian schools. The author concludes that the religious advantage is likely in part a result of the broader access to networks and resources available to religious schools associated with umbrella organizations like a Catholic archdiocese or Lutheran synod. The results are relevant to policymakers who are considering implementing a reinvented government approach to the provision of public goods, as well as leaders of nonprofit corporations who seek to maximize performance.     

Conservative Catholicism versus social Catholicism? Contrasting patterns in the political engagement of highly religious young Catholics in France and Italy

Current academic literature has proposed contrasting interpretations of the developments of youth religiosity. While some scholars have claimed increasing secularization of younger generations, others have noted the growing importance of religious values in young people's lives. To go beyond this debate, this article explores the restructuring of youth religiosity in Western European countries, characterized by the resilience of religion in secularized societies. With this purpose in mind, the article investigates the under-researched topic of the political activism of highly religious young Catholics and compares the political engagement of two recently established youth organizations: Sens Commun (SC) (rebranded Mouvement Conservateur, MC) in France and the Comunità di Connessioni (CdC) in Italy. Although both SC and CdC were founded by young Catholics, their engagement has followed diverging trajectories. While SC/MC's ideas and politics bear the imprint of conservative Catholicism, CdC's initiatives and values are inspired by social Catholicism. This article claims that the diverging trajectories of SC/MC and CdC are influenced by the long-lasting socio-historical factors that regulated the relations between religion, politics and civil society and the emerging post-secular reconfiguration that can open the way for a renewal of the forms of political engagement of young Catholics.     

Pierre Bourdieu and the sociology of religion: A central and peripheral concern

Although some of Bourdieu’s most basic concepts have their roots in the sociology of religion, religion itself has, in appearance, only a marginalized status within his work. This article focuses on the genesis of religious field and how the theories of Durkheim, Mauss, and Weber fold into the notion of field defined by Bourdieu. Religious field must be understood within the symbolic economy as well; divisions of symbolic labor are therefore discussed in relation to segmented and non-segmented societies. Finally, Bourdieu’s analysis of institutions, in particular the Catholic Church, further help us understand the use and evolution of religious field in his work and shed light on the sociologist’s understanding of the movement from religious beliefs toward aesthetic ones.     

ETHNIC,FAMILY, AND SOCIAL CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON ASIAN AMERICAN ADOLESCENTS' RELIGIOSITY

In recent years, a number of excellent ethnographic and qualitative studies have signaled a growing interest among scientists in immigrants and their religious practices. Few large-scale studies, however, have examined the religious practices and family religious context of Asian immigrant adolescents. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a large nationally representative survey, we explore the important associations between ethnic and family contexts and Asian American adolescents' religiosity. Specifically, we find that first generation Asian American adolescents report higher levels of public and private aspects of religiosity than their native-born counterparts; Filipino and Korean immigrant adolescents report higher religiosity than Chinese immigrant children; however, the most important factor influencing Asian immigrant children's religiosity is their parent's religious practices and the concordance between parent and adolescent's religious affiliations. Protestant Asian adolescents who are also from a Protestant family report higher religiosity than Buddhist or Catholic adolescents who are from a Buddhist or Catholic family. Implications of these patterns for the intergenerational transmission of religious faith and other aspects of immigrant religious practices are discussed.     

Analyzing Religiosity within an Economic Framework: The Case of Spanish Catholics

Using a sample of Spanish Catholics, we examined the level of religiosity (measured by beliefs, prayer and church attendance) and the relationship between religiosity and various socio-economic variables. An Ordered Logit estimation of religiosity equations showed that: women are more religious than men; religious activity increases with age; there is a (marginally) significant positive relationship between schooling and religiosity; religiosity is positively related to exposure to religious activity during childhood; and male religious activity is positively affected by marital status (being married to a Catholic wife) and by the number of children at home. The results also demonstrate the importance of the "salvation motive" for the two genders and the presence of the "professional utilitarian motive" in male religious behavior.     

Self-Identified Traditional,Moderate, and Liberal Catholics: Movement-Based Identities or Something Else?

Through qualitative analyses of 50 in-depth interviews with Catholics in three Midwestern cities, I investigate the role of religious movement organizations in the formation of Catholic identities. I find that movement organizations and elites tend to have little direct impact on the formation of Catholic parishioners’ identities in my sample. While movements’ disruptions and interactions with media are useful for generating debate and wider recognition of religious disagreements, my respondents are not usually socialized by nor do they identify with familiar movements when they call themselves traditional, moderate, and liberal. Most are uninterested in and unacquainted with movement organizations and publications. Instead, their religious identification is a form of religious mapping, which reflects their self-understood position vis-à-vis recognized cultural conflicts within the larger religious community. While movements play a limited role, I argue that we should be wary of conceptualizing Catholic identities as products of movement groups or parachurch networks since most Catholic identity-work occurs within families and parishes, as opposed to movements or parachurch organizations.

Child,Mother, Father,and Teacher Beliefs About Child Academic Competence: Predicting Math and Reading Performance in European American Adolescents

Beliefs about child competence in math and reading have important implications for academic performance in adolescence. However, it is unclear whether children's own beliefs are the most important predictor of their academic performance or whether parents’ and teachers’ beliefs about child competence influence child academic performance. We assessed mothers’, fathers’, teachers’, and children's beliefs about European American children's (N = 189) competence in math and reading at age 10 and children's math and language performance at ages 10, 13, and 18 years. Confirmatory factor models demonstrated that children's and teachers’ beliefs had lower loadings on a latent variable of child competence in math and reading than mothers’ beliefs. Children's self‐competence beliefs in math and reading were not significantly correlated, suggesting children may use dimensional comparisons when assessing their own competence. Mothers’, fathers’, and teachers’ assessments of child competence in math were strongly correlated with their assessments of child competence in reading. Controlling for stability in academic performance, family socioeconomic status, and other reporters, mothers and fathers who rated their children's math competence higher had adolescents who performed better in math, and fathers who rated their children's reading competence higher had adolescents who performed better in language tasks. However, children who rated their own competence higher in math and reading had lower math and language (for girls only) performance in adolescence. European American children may use dimensional comparisons that render them poorer judges of their math and reading competence than parents.     

Creating,Sustaining, or Dispelling Misconceptions: Discourse Analysis of Mainstream Print Media's Coverage of Obama's Religious Identity

This study considered the role the mainstream print media has played in creating, sustaining, or dispelling the confusion among some Americans regarding President Barack Obama's religious identity. Employing a qualitative discourse analysis of coverage of Obama's religious identity, the study noted several distinct themes, including current faith practices, connections to history, blame game, otherness, politicization, and Muslim connections. A number of articles failed to capture the social, political, and historical contexts of the issue. This failure resulted in coverage that implicitly accepted the questions' legitimacy surrounding the President's religion and delegitimized his beliefs. Other coverage legitimated the confusion over his religious identity by focusing on Obama's “nontraditional” path to Christianity. Such coverage accentuated Obama's otherness, and created the potential for distrust and doubt. The study concluded that the coverage Obama received from the mainstream print media played an important but inconsistent role in dispelling the confusion over his religious identity.     

Fighting Battles with History: The Novelist Louis Golding and the Story of the 'Doomington Wanderer'

This article explores the writing of Louis Golding in the context of existing scholarship on the Anglo-Jewish novel. It assesses the importance of Golding's background and beliefs in shaping his fiction. Golding's views bridge the cultural gap between eastern European Jewish schtetl life and interwar British society. On one hand, he was a militant supporter of Jewish/non-Jewish intermarriage, of secular Judaism and religious freedom. At the same time his writing reveals a sustained belief in Jewish 'race' and Jewish spirituality. Golding's writing on 'race' will receive particular attention. Like so many other British Jews in the period, the author seems to have been caught between his desire to fight the racism of the Third Reich and his own confused 'racial' attitudes.     

He's in a New Neighborhood Now: Religious Fantasy Themes About Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

Fred Rogers' death prompted many of his fans to post tributes to him and his show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, on the PBSkids.org Web site. Fantasy theme analysis was conducted for specifically religious themes on tributes posted during the 1st week after his death. Themes fell into one of three broad classifications. The first category, religious attribution, included applying directly religious meaning to Rogers and the program. Fans spoke of Rogers as "saintly," an "angel," and "sent from Heaven," along with other fantasy chains. The second category, religious language, included comments about prayers and blessings and the use of religious phrases. The third, religious ideals, provided a category for themes related to the program's moral values and Rogers' "compassion" and "personal character." Findings suggest long-term impact of the program's values on viewers of many ages. They also show that a group of fans reflected on Rogers' noble character by participating in a social reality constructed of religious metaphors.     

Researching religion: The vocation of the sociologist of religion

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.     

Killing the Father: Childhood and Renewal of Self-Narrative in Dambudzo Marechera's Fiction

Abstract

The contradictory impulses that characterise writing on Dambudzo Marechera's life and times were foreshadowed a long time ago in 1971 in an obligatory testimonial by his high school principal, Father Daniel Pearce, an Anglican priest. I discuss briefly the ways in which he maps Marechera's life, and suggest that he prefigured so much of its seeming intricacy and mythical qualities. Subsequent critics of his writing have only elaborated the contradictory templates of Father Pearce's hagiographic writing. What his critics have often missed in these writings and readings is Marechera's own effort at renewing his own self-narrative in the face of such readings of himself. The source of this narrative regeneration is in his recollection and uses of childhood to reflect on a longing for self-capitalisation, which is achieved by setting aside the narratives of the father (in multiple symbolic senses). His ideas of self-writing should be gleaned from his understanding and uses of childhood.