Volume 13 (2017)

Ecclesiastical division in recent times within the Anglican and Roman Communions may be influenced not only by active effort of individuals, but also by historical context of social and legal structure. This study investigates both active influence from individuals, including religious leaders, political leaders, "everyday citizens," and others, and contextual influence from history by considering geo-cultural and legal differences between the United States and Great Britain and applying a multipoint economic gravitation model. Such a model can provide insight into the way in which the various actors in the ongoing ecclesiastical situations interact with and influence each other. The model also considers historical factors that lead to differences between the modern American forms of Anglicanism and Catholicism, as well as to the variation in religious belief and action within the United States that may reasonably considered to have played and continue to play a role in influencing modern outcomes. As individuals influence others and are influenced by others, as well as are influenced by historical factors, the make-up of the various sub-groups present within Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism may change over time, thereby also changing the make-up and nature of the overall churches. The application of the multipoint gravitational model helps to explain the way in which different individuals, organizations, and factions in the religious marketplace interact with and influence each other.

Bnei Baruch is the most successful Israeli new religious movement, with some 50,000 participants in its meetings in Israel and some 150,000 worldwide. It is part of the current known as "Ashlagian Kabbalah," which includes more than twenty movements claiming the heritage of the prominent 20th century kabbalist Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag. Michael Laitman, a prominent disciple of Yehuda Ashlaga's son Baruch, founded Bnei Baruch ("Sons of Baruch") in 1991. It proposes a pragmatic approach to Kabbalah, opening its teaching to non-Jews and presenting Kabbalah as part of a universal wisdom rather than of a specific religion. Bnei Baruch's approach to Kabbalah has been contested in Israel by ultra-Orthodox Jews, who regard Kabbalah as a Jewish form of mysticism that should be taught to Jews only, by some academics, who criticize Laitman's interpretation of Kabbalistic texts as at odds with prevailing scholarship, and by the local anti-cult movement. This article draws on participant observation and interviews of members of Bnei Baruch in different countries. It explores life in Bnei Baruch and processes of affiliation to the movement, in an endeavor to explain why what was in 1981 a tiny band of ten disciples of Baruch Ashlag was able to transform itself in a comparatively short time into a global movements with tens of thousands of followers.

Research indicates that religious beliefs can have a major impact on human behavior. Despite the explanatory value of religious beliefs, they are not rigorously studied as often as they could be, because such beliefs tend to be complex, denomination-specific, and difficult to measure. Might non-denomination-specific religious beliefs help inform our understanding of religion’s influence on decision-making? Providentiality—or the belief that God has a plan that humans can help bring about—is potentially such a belief. Orthogonal to religious tradition, providentiality can inform and motivate a variety of behaviors that are of interest to scholars—from the choice to marry to the choice to vote. Data from four different sources—two nationally representative surveys, one large online survey through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, and one survey of church-attenders in Little Rock—are presented and analyzed to establish a method for validly measuring providentiality and to provide insight into its potential impact. OLS regression models and correlations present a picture of providential religious believers and their demographic, political, and religious characteristics. The results indicate that providential religious beliefs are found across religious traditions and political divisions. Better understanding individual belief motivation through mechanisms like providentiality can provide additional insight into how religion drives human behavior.

Several scholars have acknowledged the otherworldly character of black religion in America. From its inception in the late 18th century, the black church had preached a providential theology that aspired for a better and compensatory world to come. This theology provoked conflict with the bourgeoning black abolitionist movement of the early 19th century. The disagreement centered on the adoption of moral suasion as abolitionist philosophy. The early phase of Martin Delany’s abolitionist career was the theater of this conflict. Delany publicly challenged the leading black churches on the problematic nature of otherworldly theology. He proposed a secular approach that emphasized human agency instead.

In 1119 King Baldwin II of Jerusalem granted nine French knights space on the Temple Mount over the ruins of Solomon’s Temple to create the headquarters of a new monastic order: The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, or the Knights Templar. They grew in wealth and power and became an influential and pervasive organization throughout Western Europe until King Philip of France suppressed them in 1307. The Templars were only one of a number of Christian holy orders of “warrior monks” founded after the First Crusade, with more than two-dozen others founded in Syria, Central and Eastern Europe, and Iberia. More importantly for this paper, the Templars are one example of what we label “warrior elites.” Our definition of warrior elites is not precise but includes pre-industrial full-time specialized soldiers that represent a relatively small part of a region’s military forces but possess disproportionate military strength. In addition, warrior elites often possess significant political and social power. This paper explores the extent to which warrior elites have two characteristics: they adopt a special religion, either different from the mainstream religion or a unique adaptation of the mainstream religion, and the special religion has provisions that enforce property rights. To the extent warrior elites have these two characteristics, we hypothesize they are an example of a social institution that evolves as a low-cost alternative to government and to ordinary religion as a method of property rights enforcement.

In this paper we examine the influence of Christian theology on attitudes toward various ideological groups, both political and religious. We know how religious affiliations, behaviors, and beliefs in the U.S. influence voting, political party affiliation, and specific issue attitudes, but we do not fully understand how Christian theology influences one’s favorable/unfavorable attitudes to different ideological groups. Using feeling thermometers from the 2012 American National Election Survey (ANES), we test logit models for favorable/unfavorable scores toward four different ideological groups: liberals, conservatives, Muslims, and atheists. While progressive Christians are more likely to exhibit an unfavorable attitude toward groups with political differences, conservative Christians are not. On the other hand, conservative Christians are more likely to exhibit an unfavorable attitude toward groups with religious differences, while progressive Christians are not. These findings have import for understanding the religious fault lines in U.S. Christianity and how those fault lines amplify polarization.

This essay proposes a theoretical reading of contemporary religious phenomena through the two concepts of "ideologization” and “psychologization.” It situates contemporary religious trends within the context of a new “global” culture and analyzes some of the ways in which they break away from traditional concepts of religion while blurring the lines between the religious and the secular.

Since the 1972 publication of Why Conservative Churches Are Growing (Kelley), the critical distinction between (theologically) “conservative” and (culturally) “strict” has been obscured. In addition, because the strict church thesis (SCT) has been applied primarily in the U.S., the blurred concept of “conservative-strict” has been understood in American religious terms. Lack of clarity led to SCT’s appropriation by American religious leaders to claim that restrictive gender roles explain the growth of “conservative” churches, while “liberal” gender roles cause membership loss. To clarify the crucial distinction between “conservative” and “strict,” as well as to test the generalizability of the claim that restrictive gender roles promote church growth, I examine the literature on rapidly growing Brazilian Pentecostalism, a movement with “strict” membership requirements yet far more gender egalitarian than “conservative” U.S. churches. I then draw out the implications of this case to refine SCT to be more useful, especially in cross-cultural research. Specifically, I argue that research should focus on the level of “tension,” which is always an interaction between the church and its cultural context and cannot be determined by whether or not its theology is “conservative.”

This study seeks to assess the compatibility between the global trends of the prosperity gospel and liberal individualism by analyzing social survey data from Guatemala, which is one of the largest hosts of the prosperity gospel. Data from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s 2006 survey Spirit and Power: Survey of Pentecostals in Guatemala is used to conduct logistic regression analyzing the relationship between agreement with the prosperity gospel and economic and social issues. Results suggest that the prosperity gospel acts as a modernizing agent with regard to individuals’ economic attitudes but not necessarily with regard to attitudes towards social issues. We recommend that further studies be devoted to analyzing the impact of the prosperity gospel on economic, political, and civic spheres.

This paper compares the effects of religion affiliation and religious market structure on public attitudes toward Muslims in four different countries: Germany and the United Kingdom (religiously pluralistic), Sweden (predominately Protestant), and Spain (predominately Catholic). Catholic respondents in Germany and Protestants in Sweden are more likely to accept Muslims as neighbors than are the religiously nonaffiliated. Self-reported Catholicism is not significantly related to attitudes toward Muslims among Spanish respondents.

This article investigates and identifies certain religious and related social conditions of the genesis and development of Calvinism. It therefore treats Calvinism as religiously and otherwise socially conditioned rather than, as prevalent in the current sociological literature, as solely or mostly conditioning in religious as well as political, economic, and cultural terms. The article argues and demonstrates that the religious and cognate social conditions of original Calvinism essentially consist of the Ancien Régime of religion, church, and society overall in Europe, and more precisely in France. It therefore identifies Calvinism as initially the product of and subsequently the attempt at reinstituting the ancient religious and social Régime, as indicated or adumbrated by the blueprint (and title) of Calvin’s key theological treatise. Specifically, the article rediscovers and reveals Calvinism in the light of being both the effect and the restoration of the medieval theocracy, called the Christian Republic and the like, as the Ancien Régime of religion and society, through establishing Calvinist theocratic and thus non- or quasi-democratic republics. The article intends to contribute to understanding, explaining, and predicting better the social causes, functions, and effects of Calvinism generally, particularly its religious and related conditions and outcomes.

Max Weber’s thesis on the Protestant ethic represents a cornerstone in the understanding of the role of religion in the economic realm. Yet many have asked, what role can religion have in our contemporary setting? Mainly at stake is the validity of the Protestant thesis today. In order to understand the connection between our contemporary society and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, it is crucial to consider the contribution of the Puritan ethic. Weber’s reliance on the Puritan writings was driven by the conviction of the presence of an anxiety in the quest for a certitudo salutis that I contend not to be a foundational part of the religion and practice of Puritanism. A different element seems to stand out as central among the beliefs held by Puritanism and yet neglected by Weber: the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints. Also, it is important to see the inheritance of this ethic in future developments of American Protestantism today and its downfall with the advent of the prosperity Gospel.