Volume 2 (2006)

The study of religion is severely handicapped by a lack of adequate cross-national data. Despite the prominence of religion in international events and recent theoretical models pointing to the consequences of regulating religion, cross-national research on religion has been lacking. We strive to fill this void by developing measurement models and indexes for government regulation, government favoritism, and social regulation of religion. The indexes rely on data from an extensive coding of the 2003 International Religious Freedom Report for 196 countries and territories. Using a series of tests to evaluate the new data and indexes, we find that the measures developed are highly reliable and valid. The three indexes will allow researchers and others to measure the government’s subsidy and regulation of religion as well as the restrictions placed on religion by social and cultural forces beyond the state.

This article brings together two disparate literature bases pertaining to political tolerance: religion and politics (utilizing traditional religiousness) and the psychology of religion (utilizing religious motivation). Its purpose is twofold: to test whether the concepts of traditional religiousness and religious motivation are empirically as well as conceptually distinct and to test for the influence of religious motivation on political tolerance in a model that includes measures of traditional religiousness. While the religion and politics literature has historically demonstrated that increased religiousness leads to increased intolerance, the psychology of religion literature suggests that this link is illogical. This article tests that supposition. With the use of factor analysis, the concepts of traditional religiousness and religious motivation are shown to be empirically distinct from one another. Structural equation modeling shows that the religious motivation variables do not exhibit the influence predicted by the psychology of religion literature. In the same model, religious commitment behaves in a manner contrary to what previous research suggests, leading to increased and not decreased political tolerance. Given the complexity of the model used and the robust nature of structural equation analysis, this last finding warrants further investigation.

Gnosticism has been perceived as a Jewish heresy, a Hellenistic Christian heresy, an Oriental pre-Christian religious movement, an independent religious movement, and an existential response to experiences of alienation. More recently, King has argued that within a pluralistic cultural environment, Gnosticism was an integral part of early Christianity’s identity-formation process. But how did this process operate? Expanding Stark’s sociological analysis of the diffusion of Christianity, I argue that the diffusion of Gnosticism during the first two centuries of the common era is tied to the existence of population thresholds in larger urban centers, participation in a loosely regulated religious marketplace, and the maintaining of cultural continuity with existing religious movements. Data for twenty-two Greco-Roman cities are subjected to correlation and logistic regression analysis. Findings indicate that the so-called Gnostic communities were more likely to emerge earlier in urban locations where churches were present already and in larger urban centers.

Injury-oriented sacrifice is a market phenomenon that is grounded in exchanges between a relatively small supply of “martyrs” and a relatively large number of “demanders” who benefit from the martyrs’ acts. Contrary to popular perception, it is because of limited demand rather than limited supply that such markets rarely flourish. Suicidal attacks almost never profit the groups that are best equipped to recruit, train, and direct the potential killers. Once established, however, the markets are hard to shut down from the supply side because so few martyrs are required and because terrorist “firms” can readily substitute across different methods and recruits. On the other hand, relatively small changes in the political and economic environment can combine to undermine the market’s demand side.

The significance of a historical event depends largely on the meaning it carries for the social actors it has the potential to affect. That meaning is not haphazardly produced but rather is structured by the nature of the political and cultural context in which the social actors are embedded. That meaning determines whether and how individuals and entire societies reexamine their attitudes toward and beliefs about historically significant issues. We tested this proposition by examining how the attitudes of Egyptians and Moroccans were affected by the terrorist act perpetrated by al-Qa’ida on September 11, 2001, which was ostensibly carried out not only to avenge the presumed trauma Muslim nations have suffered because of the American-led “Jewish-Crusade alliance,” but also to rally the Islamic publics behind al-Qa’ida’s banner for the construction of an Islamic state. Based on survey data, our findings indicate that these publics displayed more favorable attitudes toward democracy, gender equality, and secularism after 9/11 than they did before. Accordingly, the event influenced the attitudes of the Egyptian and Moroccan publics in ways contrary to those intended by the radical Islamists. Some effects were also moderated by the respondents’ age, education, and gender. We discuss how these results contribute to the growing body of literature on the role of events in historical and social processes.

The market theory of religious economies predicts that when the state neither supports an official religion nor effectively limits religious options, a number of competing religious groups will exist, with the consequence that the overall level of public religious commitment will be high. In addition, the more effective and innovative religious organizations will prosper, and the less effective ones will decline. Applied to ancient Rome, these predictions are strongly supported by the evidence. An additional finding is that Roman religious persecution was prompted by governmental fear of and antagonism toward all faiths that sustained intense, local congregations. This fear accounts for the persecution not only of Christians and Jews, but of several pagan faiths as well.