ABSTRACT Drawing on 3 years of qualitative fieldwork at a United Methodist church and a Catholic parish in Minneapolis‐St. Paul, I analyze how White, liberal congregations translated race‐conscious ideals into organizational practice in the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd. These “antiracist projects” included education, reparations initiatives, and efforts to reform congregational culture to address shifting understandings of race. I introduce the concept of “divinized diversity”—a racial frame that draws on religious cultural tools to heighten awareness of systemic racism—to show how race‐conscious commitments paradoxically motivate individualist and expressive forms of action that reinforce rather than dismantle racial hierarchies. By sacralizing individualistic approaches to racial justice, divinized diversity naturalizes the status quo even as it mobilizes sincere commitments to change. These findings contribute to research on racialized organizations, progressive religion, and the limits of diversity ideology in majority‐White institutional settings.

ABSTRACT This research note analyzes the ambiguous boundaries of religious identity, belief, and ritual behavior in Japan, drawing on data from a nationally representative postal survey conducted in 2024 ( N = 3947). The findings reveal widespread participation in Buddhist and Shinto rituals even among individuals who identify as nonreligious or atheist, as well as the prevalence of overlapping religious affiliations. Beliefs in gods and the afterlife also vary widely and do not align neatly with religious identity categories. These results highlight how religiosity in Japan is often expressed through culturally embedded practices and inherited traditions, rather than formal belief or institutional membership. A comparative review of other national surveys shows that minor changes in question wording can significantly affect reported religiosity. By documenting the plural and diffuse nature of Japanese religiosity, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of religion in East Asia and offers methodological insights for future cross‐cultural surveys.

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine whether and how minimalism can be interpreted as a manifestation of “new spirituality” in addition to being a trendy lifestyle shaped by consumerist influences. Following Lipovetsky, we ask whether it fits within the “ephemeral cultural mechanism,” reinforcing individualism while succumbing to market pressures, or whether it continues the philosophy of voluntary simplicity, offering an alternative to materialism as a form of new spirituality. Rooted in Richard Gregg's idea of simplicity as a harmony with both nature and spirituality, minimalism may challenge consumerist norms. Using content analysis of 35 English‐language blogs, we explore discursive structures. Minimalism exemplifies a paradoxical dynamic: Embraced as a form of personal and spiritual transformation and a response to excess, it unfolds through commodified channels that market simplicity itself. Rather than rejecting consumer culture, it reconfigures it—offering sacralized experiences of authenticity and meaning, while navigating the tension between critique and commercialization.

ABSTRACT Much of the activism on environmental issues within the US Catholic Church is not coming from those with institutional power (like bishops and diocesan priests), but rather from sisters, who have no formal power. What factors facilitate sisters’ environmental activism? Drawing on qualitative interviews with US Catholic sisters who are leaders in environmental activism, we find that characteristics of avowed religious life, particularly sisters’ social networks, communal life, and biographical availability, facilitate their mobilization. Findings also suggest a relationship between institutional power and activism, with sisters’ relative lack of power giving them freedom in the margins to engage in activism. In contrast, environmental activism among bishops and priests may be constrained by their greater isolation from community and greater institutional power, which they seek to protect. This research contributes to literature on religion and social movements, as well as highlighting gendered power dynamics and environmental politics in the Catholic Church.

ABSTRACT Classic theories of religious pluralism theorized that religions compete for plausibility and acceptance based on the assumption that individuals can only have one religious identity or none. Religious identification in the United States has long been conceptualized as exclusive in nature, and surveys have in turn tended to only allow an individual to identify with a single religion. Recent research has questioned these assumptions, and there are theoretical reasons to expect that some individuals would be more likely to identify with multiple religions. The study presented here utilizes data from a probability survey of US adults in which respondents were allowed to select all the religions with which they identify to test hypotheses concerning patterns of multiple identification. A multinomial logistic regression model finds that childhood exposure to different world religions is positively associated with multiple identification relative to single identification, whereas self‐reported religiosity and political conservatism are negatively associated with multiple identification relative to single identification.

ABSTRACT This article offers an exploratory, mixed‐methods account of how nonreligious orientations are articulated and managed by a specific subpopulation of university students in Malaysia's Klang Valley. Because open atheism and public nonreligious carry social and legal risks in Malaysia, the study relied on an anonymous online survey disseminated through a combination of purposive and snowball recruitment, complemented by narrative comments and a small number of follow‑up interviews. The resulting dataset ( N = 397) is not a probabilistic or representative sample of “Malaysian university students” and therefore does not support population‑level prevalence claims. Instead, it illuminates patterns of belief, doubt, and critique within a topic‑engaged and urban student network where nonreligious identities appear as an emergent subculture. Within this sample, theism remains common but often coexists with ambivalence and individualized questioning; explicit atheist self‑identification is uncommon, while nonreligious and selective skepticism toward religious authority and institutions are more visible. Interpreted in light of secularization and nonreligion studies, the findings suggest a context‑dependent and socially constrained form of secularizing change in higher‑education settings, best understood as uneven, strategic, and relational rather than a linear decline of religion. The article concludes with methodological implications for researching “hidden” nonreligious populations in Muslim‑majority societies.

ABSTRACT Women's trajectories of religious exit in Western Europe often negotiate issues of gender and race. Drawing on life story interviews with individuals of diverse Christian and Islamic backgrounds in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, this article discusses the ways in which race, gender, and religion intersect to shape how women make sense of their decisions, processes, and experiences of religious exit. The article shows that an intersectional perspective, operationalized through theories of religion and racialization, is crucial in approaching former Christian women's concerns about racism and coloniality, and former Muslim women's negotiation of the continued perception of them as Muslim. Intersectionality is innovatively merged with the concept of religio‐racial formations to analyze women's narratives as talking about and embedded in gendered structures of religio‐racialization. The article argues for a more sustained incorporation of intersectionality in scholarship on gender and religion through further conceptualizing the religion–race nexus in Europe.

ABSTRACT The following study examines the impacts of internalized modesty messaging (IMM) on female adolescents raised within white evangelical churches. On the basis of a large‐scale dataset ( n = 5525), the article investigates associations between IMM, self‐esteem, and experiences of sexual harassment as a minor in religious institutions using a case‐control study. Analyses included nonparametric group comparisons and multiple linear regression models. Findings indicate that higher levels of IMM are associated with significantly lower self‐esteem and nearly double the reported incidences of sexual harassment during adolescence. Sexual harassment was most frequently perpetrated by other minors, revealing a prevalence of peer‐to‐peer abuse within these environments. The findings suggest that such messaging not only harms young girls’ emotional well‐being but also contributes to environments conducive to sexual abuse. The study concludes that modesty teachings may increase girls’ vulnerability to harm and calls for critical reflection of theological interpretations that link female worth to sexual modesty.