Volume 6 (2010)

Although previous studies have found that black youths use drugs less than white youths, black-white differences have rarely been explained by using data that span childhood through young adulthood. To fill this research gap, we employ nationally representative panel data to examine whether race differences occur because black youths (1) are less likely to be reared by parents who smoke, drink, and/or use illicit drugs; (2) are less likely to have drug-using friends; more likely to grow up within an evangelical Protestant religion; and (3) are more likely to be religiously involved than white youths are. Results from estimating a series of ordinary least squares regression models show that the race differences in drug use during young adulthood are due partly to differences between black and white youths in exposure to parent and peer drug users, religious involvement, and, to a lesser extent, religious upbringing.

In tracing a relatively unknown but important feature of the work of Friedrich Engels, this article offers a critical commentary on his lifelong engagement with the New Testament book of Revelation. Beginning with material from his late teens, when he was undergoing the long, slow process of giving up his Calvinist faith, Engels used the text for humor and satire, for polemics, and as a way to express his own exuberance. As the years unfolded, he would come to appreciate this biblical book in a very different fashion, namely, as a historical document that offered a window into earliest Christianity. Through three essays, one on Revelation, another on Bruno Bauer (from whom Engels drew increasingly as he grew older), and a third on early Christianity, Engels developed the influential argument that Christianity had revolutionary origins. In closing, I ask three questions: What is the abiding relevance of Engels‘s work? Where does it fall short? And what tensions does he open up in his thought by allowing ideas and beliefs to influence history?

Few studies have examined the effect of religiosity on the initiation of, persistence in, and desistence from delinquency. Yet religiosity may differentially affect these dimensions of delinquency in the early life course. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we study the relationship between religiosity and patterns of marijuana use. The results suggest that the primary effect of religiosity on marijuana use is to prevent its initiation in the first place. Religious youths are significantly more likely never to use marijuana than to initiate marijuana use or become persistent marijuana users. Although religious youths are less likely ever to use marijuana, adolescent religiosity does not significantly predict desistence from marijuana use. Furthermore, adolescent religiosity does not differentiate between never using and desistence, intermittent use and desistence, or persistent use and desistence.

Using the lenses of subcultural identity theory and causal stories, this study examines how mainline, evangelical, and black Protestant denominations discuss same-sex relationships on their websites. Results indicate that mainline denominations call for more dialogue about homosexuality and recognize varying committed relationships. In contrast, evangelical and, to some degree, black Protestant denominations condemn homosexuality, link same-sex relationships to societal ills, and emphasize the biblical sanctity of marriage. Our findings suggest that the ways in which denominations discuss same-sex relationships are related to internal consensus about issues and to denominations‘ positions within the competitive market of religious organizations. The results shed light on how denominations frame and maintain their cultural stances regarding same-sex relationships.

Previous research on religiosity and substance use primarily used cross-sectional data or, at best, two waves of data separated by a year. In contrast, we use five waves of the National Youth Survey to determine whether religiosity predicts long-term trajectories of marijuana use and whether changes in religiosity predict changes in marijuana use over time. The results suggest that religious youths use marijuana less often initially and, in contrast to nonreligious youths, exhibit smaller increases in marijuana use over time. In fact, the results suggest that highly religious adolescents are unlikely to experience any increase in marijuana use over time. When religiosity changes over time, the initial level of religiosity does not predict changes in marijuana use. However, changes in religiosity are significantly related to changes in marijuana use. When adolescent religiosity increases, marijuana use tends to decrease, and vice versa. Adolescents who maintain their high levels of religiosity over time are less likely to use marijuana, while con-sistently nonreligious youths are less likely to decrease their marijuana use.

William Sims Bainbridge has proposed a compensator theory to account for atheism, specifically theorizing that a lack of social obligations allows more freedom for individuals to espouse atheism. Despite the development of testable hypotheses, Bainbridge relies on bivariate statistics to bolster his argument, and adequate empirical tests of these hypotheses have not yet occurred. In this article, data from the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, an extensive random survey of American adults, are used to test several hypotheses derived from this theoretical model. Overall, the results from a series of logistic regression models, in which various extraneous factors can be controlled for, generally do not support the secondary compensator model. Drawing from these results, I propose an alternative theory to account for the development of atheism in individuals.

The literature on the success of Pentecostal Protestantism in Latin America has yielded a number of hypotheses about the role of material deprivations in producing converts. The gist of the hypotheses is that people will seek supernatural solutions to their thwarted social and material desires. But analyses of national samples from eighteen Latin American nations, in surveys collected by the Gallup World Poll, fail to confirm these hypotheses. This suggests that deprivation theory should be extended to include religious deprivation. According to this extended theory, people will pursue or initiate supernatural solutions to their thwarted existential and moral desires. This hypothesis is consistent with the fact that most religious movements have originated among the privileged and, in the case of Latin American Protestantism, the fact that an effort by the Catholic Church to counter the Protestant threat by supporting Liberation Theology (which assumed the primacy of material deprivations) failed, while the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement (which is aimed at religious motives) has successfully generated a strong Catholic response to Protestantism in Latin America.

The charitable practices of the Christians before Constantine‘s conversion were exemplary. But the question of how the Christians sustained their charitable practices has seldom been explored. This article provides a sense of the sacrificial character and significant scale of their charity and then employs psychosocial theories to provide a scientific explanation for its success. It argues that the early Christians‘ charitable practices depended on their group norms of charity; on a social context that helped to set Christians apart, thereby enabling the norms to shape behaviors; and on church leaders who embodied sacrificial charity in word and deed, thereby shaping and sustaining charity as a group norm.