Volume 8 (2012)

Tanzania, one of the few countries in sub-Saharan Africa to have achieved an impressive degree of national integration, is increasingly facing a religious challenge in the nation-building process. Using a historical perspective that traces the origin of the Tanzanian state as well as documenting contemporary evidence, largely based on an in-depth study of the six selected religious organizations, this article makes the argument that there is a high degree of suspicion among religious communities, which makes national unity and political stability fragile. Christian and Islamic organizations generally have different perceptions of the degree to which the Tanzanian state is secular, and they tend to adopt different stances on a number of political issues and public policies. The article recommends a restructuring of governance structures and a change of the state attitude from a state-centric to a more democratic approach that would allow free articulation of societal demands, including those of a religious nature, and the effective management of these demands as a way of promoting peaceful coexistence and cooperation in a multireligious nation.

In many communities, women religious play a vital role in addressing the needs of the poor, neglected, and vulnerable members of society. Catholic Sisters have long been active in the areas of education, health care, outreach, and advocacy in northeast Ohio. In high-poverty urban areas such as Cleveland, women religious continue to provide essential services, support, and spiritual guidance. The experience in Cleveland is relevant to other cities where the population has shifted from an urban center to suburban areas, leaving inner-city churches with declining membership and support. Survey data collected from 164 Catholic Sisters from fifteen religious orders in Cleveland and the surrounding area illuminate the characteristics of Sisters’ ministries and suggest ways in which proactive and collaborative efforts can enhance the provision of services now and in the future.

This study examines the association between the Confucian ethic of female subordination and depression among young people, using a community data sample that was collected from rural China. Our findings show a positive relationship between the Confucian ethic of female subordination and depression among women in rural China who committed suicide. We also found that the positive association was more pronounced for the married women among the living controls. However, we did not detect any such association for young Chinese men.

Endorsement of same-sex marriage has increased in recent years; however, opposition continues and is often based on religious ideology. Previous research investigating the influence of religion on support for same-sex marriage has ignored the possible impact of individuals’ endorsement of denominational teachings about same-sex sexuality. This study examines the role of religious tradition, religiosity, and individual endorsement of denominational teachings concerning homosexuality on support for same-sex marriage among self-identified heterosexual college students. It is one of the first studies to use syncretism, or the congruence between individually held religious beliefs and denominational teachings, as a variable. We found that syncretism plays a small but unique role in explaining attitudes toward same-sex marriage. We discuss implications for future research and for advocacy efforts to legalize same-sex marriage.

We hypothesize that religious adolescents are less likely to lie to their parents than are their nonreligious peers because religious adolescents are more strongly attached to their parents, have a higher level of self-control, are less likely to use marijuana and alcohol, and are less likely to have substance-using friends. As expected, the results suggest that adolescents who believe that religion is important are less likely to lie to their parents. Contrary to our expectations, however, the results suggest that adolescents who attend church frequently are more likely to lie to their parents. Although parental attachment, self-control, substance use, and friends’ substance use all mediate part of the relationship between importance of religion and lying to parents, parental attachment and self-control are the most important. In contrast, the effect of church attendance on lying to parents is not mediated by parental attachment, self-control, substance use, or friends’ substance use. Supplemental analysis suggests that the effect of church attendance on lying to parents depends on the importance of religion. That is, adolescents are especially likely to lie to their parents when they attend church frequently but do not think that religion is important.

Marriage guidebooks for Orthodox Jews in Israel have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Previous research has shown that Jewish Orthodox Israelis are exposed to liberal Western ideals about romantic love and gender egalitarianism while continuing to uphold conservative family values. To gain insight into how leaders of Orthodox Jewish groups deal with these conflicting meaning systems, a representative sample of thirty guidebooks written for Religious Zionist and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel was analyzed by using a qualitative grounded theory analysis. The books were found to reject romantic love and gender egalitarianism, emphasizing instead the notions of other-focused giving and an essentialist gender partnership. The authors of these books also offer religious meaning systems focused on the interface between God and couples that we term marriage theologies. We offer a typology of five marriage theologies, which endeavor to infuse even the most mundane aspects of marital life with sacred meaning. This re-enchantment of marriage plays a central role in recalibrating the religious meaning system in response to the secular Western culture surrounding it. The diversity of marriage theologies means that differential meaning systems can be offered to a wide range of Orthodox couples, from moderate to highly conservative and from idealistic newlyweds to disillusioned long-married couples.

Is one sin worse than another? Although hundreds of transgressions and vices are listed in religious works, the seven deadly sins (lust, greed, pride, envy, gluttony, sloth, and wrath) are considered the origin of all sin. In a psychological context, they involve basic emotions, attitudes, cognitions and behaviors related to central areas of psychology such as self-identity, interpersonal and intergroup relations, and psychological dysfunction and improvement. This article investigates how religious and nonreligious individuals in the United States distinguish the relative weight of different transgressions. A repeated measures analysis found a cultural “sin pattern” ranging from self-focused to other-focused and falling into four clusters that include biological desires and evolutionary adaptive mechanisms. A mixed factorial ANOVA analysis across different groups that were differentiated by gender, religion, age, marital status, and politics found moderating variables, including a “lust effect.” These variables also predicted severity ratings for six of the seven deadly sins, with a unique set of predictors for each type of sin. Although religious variables might be expected to be the driving force behind appraisals of sin, our research provides new insight into the complex nature of how sin is evaluated, including the possibility that a cultural understanding of the seven deadly sins has subsumed the religious meaning of certain deadly sins in U.S. culture.

In 1633, the Papal Inquisition condemned Galileo Galilei as a heretic for attempting to rationalize Catholic scripture with Copernicus’ theory of heliocentrism. Nearly four centuries later, heliocentricity is widely accepted, and the Roman Catholic Church boasts one of the finest astronomical observatories in the world. What might account for such a radical shift in Church policy? Credence good theory offers an explanation. According to this theory, it is vital to establish and maintain a reputation if a credence good supplier is to survive. An examination of the credence qualities of religion reveals this to be true in the religious marketplace. Paying particular attention to the Roman Catholic Church, this article reveals reputational maintenance to be a driving force behind the Church’s response to Galileo. Furthermore, the theory explains how a longer-term strategy of reputational maintenance continues to influence the Church’s policy as it prepares to meet similar challenges in the future.

It has been widely observed over the last several years that atheists are not well liked in the United States. Yet there is one group in the United States with whom atheists have not been compared: "cultists." Using data from four surveys of three different populations, this article compares attitudes toward atheists with attitudes toward people who are labeled as cultists. The data indicate that people who are labeled as cultists are viewed even more negatively than are atheists. Furthermore, whereas a number of variables predict attitudes toward atheists, none of the independent variables in the present study are statistically significant predictors of attitudes toward cultists, who were universally disliked across respondents.

This article explores the mechanisms of congregational support provided by American churches to a sample of Christian soldiers who have been deployed into combat zones. I conducted qualitative interviews with six Christian soldiers to discover the congregational support provided by their faith communities. Additionally, one soldier who identified as atheist was interviewed. Through these interview sessions, three main mechanisms of relational support were discovered: the creation of divine associations of symbols and rhetoric, a hagiographic resource to mimic, and mutually beneficial protective services. In this article, I situate the research within previous scholarship pertaining to the relationship between religiosity and well-being, and I examine the mechanisms of support to evaluate the role of religious resources provided by faith communities in reintegrating combat soldiers into American society and legitimating military action. The Christian soldiers who were interviewed for this study consistently noted the importance of their faith communities during and after their deployment for their subjective well-being. The analysis suggests that with a high volume of soldiers returning from combat duty, religious organizations could prove vital in the soldiers' reintegration.