Volume 5 (2009)

The cities of the Roman Empire had a degree of autonomy in the responsibility for their local affairs. This autonomy was exercised on terms that differed in detail from place to place, but the general principle was that there was a city or town council whose members were selected by a nomination process in which men (and, in a few cases, women) of the propertied class were available to be nominated and, once nominated, were obliged to serve unless the individual could establish by litigation that he or she was entitled to be exempt. Service was costly, requiring expenditure of council members‘ own funds on the community‘s needs; but a councillor might gain recognition and prestige by discharging council duties with distinction, and in some cases, service on a city council would qualify a councillor (who had sufficient means) to advance to imperial appointments in equestrian grades. The extent to which Christians served as members of councils (i.e., as decurions) during the period when Christianity remained illegal is of interest as a pointer toward the social status of Christians and the degree of engagement between the Christian churches and institutions of government in the Roman world. In this article, a catalogue of all pre-Constantine Christian city councillors who are known by name is given, with commentary on the evidence in each case.

For the most part, Americans interact with other people like themselves—those with similar social and economic backgrounds. This homogeneity of social networks contributes in turn to social stratification and to the unequal distribution of social capital and civic integration. Religious congregations offer a rare opportunity for Americans to interact across social status lines. I use data from the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey, which includes survey responses from relatively large samples of attendees nested within a large random sample of congregations, to examine the prevalence of income and education diversity in religious congregations. In contrast to racial diversity, which is minimal, there are high levels of social status diversity in most congregations. Status diversity in congregations also varies with congregational characteristics, such as religious tradition, age of the congregation, and racial makeup of the congregation; neighborhood characteristics, such as urbanity and proportion racial minority; and region of the country. I conclude by discussing the implications of the opportunities for cross-status interactions in religious congregations.

We examine the implications of decision theory for religious choice and evangelism under the assumption that people choose their religion. The application of decision theory leads us to a broad definition of religion and a particular definition of faith, each related to the uncertainty associated with what happens to a person after death. We examine two extremes: total ambiguity and no ambiguity. For the extreme of total ambiguity, we show that there is "designer religion", which is a religion that will capture all decision makers when any one of the standard decision criteria is applied. For the extreme of no ambiguity, we characterize the conditions under which a decision maker will find new religious information more valuable, and we characterize a "miracle" in a specific way.

The hypotheses that religiosity and parenting style predict social responsibility were tested by using data from 386 participants in the age range of 18 to 29 years in the city of Shiraz, Iran. Survey instruments included a measure of social responsibility that was used previously by Gough, McClosky, and Meehl (1952) and a new index of religiosity that assesses the degree to which religious beliefs are manifested in daily life. Hierarchical regression indicates that religiosity and parenting style were associated positively with social responsibility in young people. Structural modeling indicated both direct and indirect effects mediated by parenting style on social responsibility. The maximum and minimum direct effects were associated with religiosity and gender, respectively. The maximum and minimum indirect effects were associated with the father's education and the mother's education, respectively.

The goals of the present study were twofold: to examine gender differences in identity processing styles and religiosity and to examine relationships between the two in an Iranian undergraduate university sample. Two gender differences were found: Women scored higher on the normative identity style scale and on the religiosity scale. Normative identity style was positively correlated with the religious rituals and general religiosity scales.

William Peter Blatty‘s novel "The Exorcist" has been linked to changes in lived religion in the United States and to a popular revival of demonology and exorcism ministries. This article considers the historical context in which the novel was written and suggests that "The Exorcist" presents an early critique of the secularization narrative by referencing the folk piety of the American life-world. Peter Williams has described American religion as a dialectic between ecclesiastical religion and popular religion. With this in mind, I argue that "The Exorcist" represents a cultural moment in which the perceived decline of supernaturalism inspired a resurgence of folk piety. To audiences in the early 1970s, the medley of Catholic demonology, popular occultism, and parapsychology in "The Exorcist" came as an appealing antidote to rationalized religion and a secular social order.

A great deal of interest has surrounded the topic of religious pluralism and the effects of the frequently used pluralism index on outcomes such as religious participation rates. But surprisingly little work has tried to understand the sources of pluralism or what the pluralism index is actually measuring. In an attempt to reframe the debate, we treat pluralism as an outcome variable. Drawing on ideas in the organizational ecology literature and data from previous studies on pluralism and participation, we show that the pluralism of religious suppliers is a product of the pluralism of religious preferences and the number of potential adherents within an environment. This pluralism of suppliers, in turn, produces a pluralism of religious consumers. We then distinguish between expected pluralism and observed pluralism, and we argue that a relationship between pluralism and participation will be expected only when a meaningful gap between these two measures exists. We close by examining the previous research to show how this reframing of the pluralism and participation question sheds light on that literature.

The relationship between Christian missionaries and dominant Western society is a little-explored aspect of the cultural negotiation between Christian missionaries and indigenous communities. The hypothesis underlying this article is that the influence of Christian missionaries on the indigenous peoples of Alaska, as manifested by the maintenance of indigenous languages, for example, should vary according to the level of sectarian tension (using Stark and Bainbridge‘s terminology) that exists between the missionaries‘ religious denomination and the dominant American society. We postulate that missionaries from low-tension denominations will encourage indigenous communities to resemble American communities, whereas missionaries from denominations with high levels of tension with Western society will have less motivation to press for the assimilation of indigenous peoples into the dominant culture. To test our proposition, we collected data on social and economic indicators such as maintenance of indigenous language, household composition, income, village political structure, and public works for 164 Alaska Native villages. Using historical and anthropological sources, we classified the villages into nine groups representing denominational missionary influence in the villages. We further subclassified these denominational groups into three groups (Church, Catholic, and Sect) that indicate each denomination‘s level of sectarian tension. When all variables were used together, the multivariate technique of correspondence analysis produced an ordination of the villages that correlated well with the sectarian tension classification, and this association was further confirmed by single-variable analysis of variance and log-linear (chi-square) analyses.

In his treatise De pudicitia ("On Modesty"), the early Christian writer Tertullian contrasts the "church of the spirit" with the "church of the bishops" and attacks a certain "Pontifex Maximus, the bishop of bishops." The identity of this "bishop of bishops" is not spelled out, but the two most likely candidates are the bishop of Rome and the bishop of Carthage. Although many scholars have concluded that Tertullian was referring to the bishop of Carthage, I seek to defend a Roman referent. In reviewing the past possibilities offered by scholars I summarize the major trends and highlight the appeal to motive in the competing arguments. The motive that most scholars have presumed for identifying the bishop as Carthaginian is that Tertullian was a member of the Montanist sect, which it is assumed was denounced by the bishop of Carthage. Although recent scholarship has called Tertullian's Montanism into question, even denying any existence of a Montanist sect in Carthage at this time, scholars still link Tertullian's "bishop of bishops" to Carthage. Recent psychological theory on social identity offers a means to illustrate why the common assumptions that underlie the preference for a Carthaginian referent are dubious. Tertullian's tract De pudicitia can then be read with a view toward identifying his social identity as one that is in opposition to Roman Christians.

In this article, we examine the association between religiosity and academic achievement among adolescents. Recent research demonstrates a positive association between religiosity and academic success. However, some studies show that this association is due to family and community factors; for example, variation in levels of family capital among religious affiliates could explain it. Yet whether religious factors affect academic achievement among adolescents might also be due to the concordance or discordance of religiosity between parents and their children. Using data for two years from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine the association between adolescents' religiosity, parents' religiosity, and academic achievement in light of the effects of family and community capital. The results indicate that the association between adolescents' religiosity and academic achievement is largely due to family social capital, but the association between academic achievement and religious homogamy between parents and adolescents is largely independent of family and community social capital. In particular, the highest achievement is predicted when parents and adolescents report similar levels of religiosity; the lowest achievement is predicted when parents report high religiosity and adolescents report low religiosity.