American Religion Research Articles

After Restructuring: Understanding Religion, Nonreligion, and Spirituality in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract The Restructuring of American Religion (1988) provided a still-influential framework for the study of American religion that centered the emergence, after World War II, of a left–right religio-political divide driving mobilization around conflicts understood as moral. But in the last 30 years, the landscape of American religion has been transformed by decline in commitment to mainstream religious institutions, especially white Christian ones, and by the emergence of large groups of Americans who are religiously indifferent or who embrace spirituality or nonreligion. A new framework is needed to account for this transformed landscape. This framework must avoid problems characteristic of earlier approaches by conceiving of morals and interests as mutually constitutive, centering whiteness, racialization, and the defense of heteropatriarchy in explaining religio-political conflict, integrating the study of nonreligion and spirituality and religion, and analyzing not only decline in religious commitment but the changing meaning of religious identity in a transformed landscape.

The Culture Wars in American Religions at the End of the 20th Century

The Culture Wars in American Religions at the End of the 20th Century

Bringing Back God: Goldenberg and the Vestigial State in American Religion

Naomi Goldenberg’s model of religion as a “vestigial state” is an excellent interrogation of how religion interacts with the state. To Goldenberg, religions traditionally functioned in the same manner as nation-states before being conquered and delineated as semi-autonomous institutions under the larger secular apparatus. However, I argue in this paper that Goldenberg’s “vestigial state” fails to account for the dynamism that religions have in their relationships to the state. I propose seeing religions as “alternative authorities”, which can be subordinate, cooperative, or hostile to the secular state. These perspectives as an alternative authority are seen best in the evolution of American fundamentalism and Christian nationalism, whose adherents have historically distinguished themselves from the state while simultaneously engaging in the effort to reshape it. In looking at how these movements develop, we understand that religions are constantly evolving in how to achieve and maintain power.

Materializing Faith and Politics: The Unseen Power of the NCCS Pocket Constitution in American Religion

Materializing Faith and Politics: The Unseen Power of the NCCS Pocket Constitution in American Religion

Hair, Roots, and Crystal Balls: Archival Viscerality, Black Conjuring Traditions, and the Study of American Religions

Hair, Roots, and Crystal Balls: Archival Viscerality, Black Conjuring Traditions, and the Study of American Religions

Are Dwarves Protestant? American Religion and “Dungeons & Dragons”

I analyze the ideology of representation of religion in the tabletop role-playing game (TRPG) Dungeons & Dragons. I approach TRPGs as a type of protostory, an interactive set of stories governed by rules which provides affordances to create different stories. Whether a specific story is relatively hard or easy to instantiate from the protostory indicates if this particular instantiation serves as a preferred, negotiated, or oppositional reading of the TRPG rules. Based on an analysis of the dimensions of religion proposed by Ninian Smart, contrasted with Harold Bloom’s idea of American religion, as well as the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation, I discuss the similarity between the way Dungeons & Dragons simulates religion, and the traditional understanding of religion in American culture.

Post-COVID-19 American Religion: Congregational Crisis, Opportunity, and Innovation

This paper explores the changing nature of congregations in the United States in a post-pandemic era, presenting a sociological analysis of crisis and opportunity. Drawing on insights from the expansive, five-year study – Exploring the Pandemic Impact on Congregations (EPIC) – the author focuses on the relationship between technology, innovation, optimism, and congregational life. The study asks how congregations can adapt and advance in the rapidly changing (digital) world, with its embrace of new internet technologies that have profoundly disrupted the “normal” ways of doing religion. The framework for understanding change draws on Scott Galloway’s twin theses that the pandemic has (1) acted as an accelerant to existing trends, both positive and negative, and (2) that the more disruptive the crisis, the greater the potential opportunity. Implications from the research not only for religious communities, but also educators, administrators, and leaders from various industries are discussed.
 Keywords: America religion, COVID-19, congregational crisis

“Entre Deux Transatlantiques”: American Religion and the French Family at the Comédie-Française (1890)

Mormonism, seen in 1865 by French critic Hippolyte Taine as an American religious and social experiment conducted “for our benefit,” appears frequently in French thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whether Taine intended it or not in his use of the word “benefit,” this American religion was mobilized in French conversations about pressing sociopolitical issues such as gender identity, marriage, and the social norms surrounding those issues. Relying on a cultural studies approach, we illustrate in this article how French literary critic and playwright Philippe Gille uses Mormonism in Camille, a play in which he explores issues of gender in the context of the état civil during the Third Republic. First performed at the French national theater (Comédie-Française) in 1890, Gille’s play stages the transatlantic encounter of Franco-American cultures and values as a way to displace questions about the capacity of the French state to regulate marriage and family relationships.

‘Give the Grant Money to the Youth’: From Youth Departure to Belonging in the Ethnic Church

Abstract This paper uses sociological theories of religious change to explain findings from action research on intergenerational relations at two ethnic churches in the U.S. At the outset of our study, immigrant adults felt threatened that younger congregants preferred non-ethnic churches. When these churches used research funds to support youth development and outreach programs, they experienced intergenerational congregational belonging. We ask, do existing sociological theories sufficiently explain how these ethnic churches responded to the ecclesial problem of youth departure? Can we use action research to advance theories of how youth practice belonging within ethnic churches? We show how action research produced anomalous cases of intergenerational partnership that begs the integration of market-based and neo-institutional theories of religious change. We argue that future action research targeting youth ministries and civic activism in ethnic churches can explain how American religion is changing through the immigrant youth demographic.

The Use of Folklore in the Study of American Religion

In The Archive, we republish an article that, in hindsight, may have been ahead of its time with its prescience. Our pull for this issue is a 1982 piece by Richard E. Wentz where he discusses the idea that American folk traditions should be used as an introduction to lead students into the realm of American Religion. Wentz believes it is important for students to learn these folk tales in order to have essential knowledge about the religious lives of “everyday people,” knowledge which Wentz believes is not being taught in academia or in American religious institutions.

From Syncretism to Hybridity: Transformations in African-derived American Religions: An Introduction

Abstract In this volume, we bring together research on African derived Religions in Latin America and African American Religions in the USA. Theoretically, the concepts of hybridity and syncretism are discussed, in the introduction as well as in the papers included. The papers featured deal with Brazilian Umbanda, Cuban Santería, US African Black Hebrew Israelites, the Five Percenter movement (an offspring of the Nation of Islam), and one single person, Robert T. Browne, an activist in the Black Nationalist movement. In the religions covered – that are an outcome of the historical circumstances of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade – elements taken from West and Central African traditions, European Christianity, and Kardecian Spiritism blend to new forms of religious movements. This being the “fundamental” transformation of religion addressed here, some essays in the volume also look at the further transformation of those traditions in a “glocalized” world.

A Search for Liberalizing Religion: Political Asymmetry in the American Religious Landscape

AbstractThis study explores potential heterogeneity in the relationship between religion and politics in the United States. Rather than assume all religion is conservatizing, it conducts a broad preliminary search for liberalizing religion across three cross‐sectional national datasets. While the study finds the most liberal politics among adherents of particular “liberal” religious groups rather than among the unaffiliated, it largely fails to find forms of religion where exposure is associated with liberal politics. In fact, exposure to even “liberal” religion is generally associated with more conservative politics. American religion's political asymmetry has important societal implications in a highly religious nation where even liberal religion appears to conservatize the public.

Review: At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion, edited by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

Review: <i>At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion</i>, edited by Elizabeth Shakman Hurd and Winnifred Fallers Sullivan

Building the Plane as We’re Landing It

What does American religion sound like? For eight years, the American Religious Sounds Project (ARSP) was animated by this question. The archive includes hundreds of recordings made across the United States, representing dozens of religious denominations, collected across the span of eight years. This paper reports on the journey the ARSP has taken from metadata in Microsoft Word through its final migration to the Vincent Voice Library at Michigan State University. I reflect on the shifting standards, missing metadata, complex data models, and thoughtful curation this project required throughout its lifecycle.

Religiosity, financial distress and R&D accounting treatment in US context

PurposePrior research shows that religiosity affects the degree of managers' risk aversion. As a result, religious firms are less likely to invest in R&D activities. Moreover, US GAAP treats these investments as expenses. For this reason, religious firms have fewer expenses in their earnings and are less likely to be in financial distress.Design/methodology/approachData are collected from Worldscope and the Churches and Church Membership files of the American Religion Data Archive website from 1985 to 2018. With 18,199 observations in US context, the authors used the marginal effect to test the mediating effect of R&D accounting treatment.FindingsThe authors find that the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with US GAAP is higher than the marginal effect of religiosity on financial distress with capitalization of R&D costs, which means that accounting treatment can explain the relation between religiosity and financial distress in the US context.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors used linear interpolation and linear extrapolation data to be able to conduct this research over a period of 1985–2018. For future researches, the authors propose to test other factors which can explain the relationship between religiosity and financial distress based on the ethics element.Practical implicationsThese results should be of interest to regulators because treating R&D activities as expenses can destroy the accounting performance of firms that prefer investing in risky projects. This favoritism prevents the comparison between two firms in the same industry with different risk-taking behaviors. This problem is more prevalent if the authors have two firms with different ratios of religiosity. This paper suffers from a major limitation related to data availability.Originality/valueThis may be the first study that investigates why religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress. This paper notes that religious firms are less likely to be in financial distress because their conservative behavior towards R&D activities coincides with the conservative R&D accounting treatment. In fact, the mismatch between expenses and revenues from R&D activities can cause financial distress.

Reflections on Asian American Religions: Transformative Hope and APARRI

Reflections on Asian American Religions: Transformative Hope and APARRI

Reflections on Asian American Religions: Transformative Hope and APARRI

Reflections on Asian American Religions: Transformative Hope and APARRI

A Bitter Poetics of Differentiation: Cultural Evolution in the Verse of John Wesley Powell

ABSTRACT The famed explorer, scientist, and U.S. government administrator John Wesley Powell (1834–1902) was a significant contributor to cultural evolutionary thinking in the late-nineteenth century. In addition to scientific publications, he also – curiously – used the genre of poetry as an outlet for his ideas. This article analyzes two of Powell’s obscure published poems. I argue that his poetry is significant, not for its literary value, but for what it reveals about theories of cultural evolution that were operative for a significant U.S. government agent who played a critical role in the production of knowledge about Native American religions. This article contributes to the theme of political theology and settler colonialism by examining the ideological features of settler colonialism – the production of ideas, knowledge, and theories that have supported and justified U.S. settler colonialism. I demonstrate that there was an aesthetic as well as a scientific register to racialized cultural evolutionary thinking.

Religious Identity‐Inconsistent Attending: Its Correlates and Political Implications

AbstractThe foundation of religious measurement in surveys presumes that individual religious affiliation (“What is your present religion, if any?”) accurately describes the religious community in which respondents are involved. But what if it doesn't? In a recent survey of 4,000 Americans, we asked whether their current congregation matches their religious identity and about a fifth of Americans indicated that it does not. We document the degree of this inconsistency, its correlates, and its implications, focusing primarily on the politics that congregants are exposed to from clergy and the attitudes they hold about salient political matters. The identity‐inconsistent attenders often vary significantly from identity‐consistent attenders, which serves to introduce considerable measurement error in the use of a religious tradition measure to depict American religion. The results suggest that salient disagreement induces a sizable population to migrate to a congregation outside their religious identity.

Infrastructure and American religion: Sites, methods, and theories for a changing field

AbstractThis article reviews the literature on infrastructure in the study of American religions, examining its recent emergence as a topic of study and demonstrating its deeper role in the canons of the field. It argues that infrastructure has quickly become a multivalent conceptual term in the field, as well as a site for research. This latter point leads to a detailed summation of infrastructure's role in constructing and challenging the conventional boundaries of what “religion” is in America, what is “American” about American religion, and how scholars of religion might rethink “America” as a geographic and conceptual formation for our study. Infrastructure has an important role to play in creative theoretical and methodological engagements in the study of American religion and in fact has already staked its claim in the field's ongoing transformation.