Belief In Hell Research Articles

Faith and fate: Religious leaders’ Bible, heaven, hell beliefs and end-of-life choices

Controversies surrounding end-of-life choices may be due to differences in congregational affiliation and beliefs about the Bible, heaven, and hell. Focusing on religious leaders (N = 1541), this study investigated how these factors are associated with attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide, allowing a patient to die by withholding treatment, and withdrawing treatment in favor of pain relief. Religious leaders affiliated with White liberal or moderate denominations were more supportive of these end-of-life choices compared to those affiliated with Roman Catholic; White conservative, evangelical, or fundamentalist; and Black Protestant congregations. Literalist view of the Bible and belief in hell were significantly associated with less support across the three choices, whereas belief in heaven was significantly associated with less support for only physician-assisted suicide. This study highlights the varying significance of religious beliefs in understanding variations in views on end-of-life choices and sheds light on the moral distinction associated with various choices.

Religiosity and Muslims’ gender role attitudes toward women’s right to work

This study aimed to examine the effect of religiosity on the gender role attitudes of Muslims toward women’s right to work. It probed the cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of religiosity and tested whether measures derived from these components affect Muslims’ agreement with the statement that when jobs are scarce, men should have more rights to a job than women. This study employs individual-level data from the sixth and seventh waves of the World Values Surveys and adopts logistic regression analysis as the main empirical methodology. The main findings reaffirmed the effect of religiosity. Muslims who are more religious are more likely to have gender role attitudes that favor men’s right to work over women’s when jobs are scarce. This is true for religiosity measured by beliefs in hell, the importance of God in life, the importance of religion in life, the frequency of prayer, and the frequency of religious service attendance. Participation in religious organizations as a measure of behavioral religiosity has only a weak effect on the gender role attitudes of Muslims toward women’s right to work. These findings highlight the importance of considering religiosity when analyzing gender dynamics in labor markets within Muslim societies.

Have the Inhabitants of France, Great Britain, Spain, and the US Been Secularized? An Analysis Comparing the Religious Data in These Countries

This paper carries out a comparative analysis of the religious beliefs and practices of residents in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, using two waves of the World Values Survey. The main objective is to investigate the impact that secularization has had on the religious experience in these countries. More specifically, the prospection is carried out around the Christian creed in its Protestant and Catholic manifestations, understood as the majority beliefs in these countries. To carry out this task, we compiled a series of data distributed around the following categories: Contextualization: The importance of religion within different aspects of life; level of religiosity and membership in religious denominations; the sphere of beliefs: Belief in God, belief in life after death, belief in hell, and belief in heaven; scope of practices; and the nones. Subsequently, we carry out an explanatory-interpretative analysis articulated around four questions or challenges faced by these religious forms in the context of secularization: 1. The crisis of Christianity; 2. the thesis of European exceptionalism; and 3. the rise of the nones. In conclusion, the data analyzed allow us to affirm—with nuances—the following: 1. The existence of a process of dechurching in the heart of Christianity; 2. the confirmation that the European case is exceptional if we compare it with other trends or other cultural programs of secularization; 3. that the area of greatest dechurching is linked to community practice, something that allows this research to adhere to Davie’s thesis, which defines the current religious situation as believing without belonging; and 4. as a consequence of the process of dechurching, there is a rise of a social group without religious adscription: The nones.

How Does Race Moderate the Effect of Religion Dimensions on Attitudes toward the Death Penalty?

We examined the moderating role of race on the relationship between religion and death penalty attitudes in the United States. We operationalized religion by distinguishing four dimensions: religiosity, spirituality, afterlife beliefs, and denomination. Using 2018 General Social Survey data from 1054 adults, collected by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, we show that the impact of each dimension of religion varies across racial groups. Logistic Regression results showed that the likelihood of support for the death penalty was associated with religiosity, spirituality, belief in hell, being female, and being liberal. Adding race as an interaction term moderated the associations of religiosity and spirituality.

Belief in Hell and Parenting Priorities Concerning Child Independence and Obedience: Does Economic Context Matter?

AbstractThis study examines the ways that belief in hell is associated with parental goals concerning child independence and obedience. Further, it assesses how this association is contingent upon economic circumstances of a nation, reflected by a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. Multilevel analyses with data from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010‐2014) show that belief in hell is associated with a greater likelihood of opposing independence and endorsing obedience. Yet, these observed associations differ across national economic context. Specifically, the negative association between belief in hell and parental endorsement of independence is greater in countries that are more economically developed. Similarly, the positive association between belief in hell and parental endorsement of obedience is greater in countries that are more economically developed. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed regarding the interplay of religion, parental values about child socialization, and social context.

Slapping Them Into Heaven? Individual and Social Religiosity, Religious Fundamentalism, and Belief in Heaven and Hell as Predictors of Support for Corporal Punishment.

Support for corporal punishment (CP) has been associated with religiosity. Yet, little is known about which aspects of religiosity predict support for CP. To close this gap in the literature, we investigated how individual and social religiosity, religious fundamentalism, belief in heaven, belief in hell, and demographic variables contribute for the support of CP. We analyzed population-based cross-sectional data, as gathered in the General Social Survey, with a final sample size of n = 671. Using ordinal regression, we found that increased support for CP was best predicted by belief in heaven and religious fundamentalism. These results suggest that support for CP seems to emerge mainly from absolute belief in divine reward and retribution. Religious parents might endorse CP as a means to ensure that their children enter heaven.

Testimonial Exclusions and Religious Freedom in Early America

In the late eighteenth century, American law treated oath-taking as an invocation of divine vengeance for sworn falsehoods. Prospective witnesses who did not believe in God or hell were not allowed to testify. But this strict evidentiary rule survived only a few more decades. Gradually at first, and then with growing speed, the theological underpinnings of oath-taking eroded across the United States in the early nineteenth century. The story of this transition, only vaguely appreciated in the current literature, illuminates and weaves together several important strands of nineteenth-century social and legal history. The common-law rule, it turns out, came into escalating conflict with American religion, particularly after a liberal offshoot of Calvinism began rejecting the existence of hell. By prevailing founding-era standards, being unable to testify did not impede or punish the exercise of religion, allowing the rule to survive an initial volley of legal challenges. But as reform efforts mounted, a neutrality-based view of religious liberty and an egalitarian conception of civil privileges began to supplant the earlier constitutional settlement. By the mid-nineteenth century, evidence rules throughout the United States no longer required belief in hell, and almost half of the states allowed atheists to testify. This transition also prompted the first widespread rethinking of American evidence law, shifting its foundational principle from reliance on the inviolability of oaths to confidence in the jury's fact-finding capacity, and laying the groundwork for further liberalization in the 1850s and 1860s that allowed testimony from black witnesses and from interested parties. Moreover, the controversy about religion-based exclusions led to a new understanding that barring testimony from particular minority groups effectively denied those groups the protection of the law.

Heaven, hell, and attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide

Using data from the 2007 Baylor Religion Survey, I evaluate whether beliefs in heaven and hell are associated with attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide. I find that those who believe in heaven and those who believe in hell tend to have negative attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide, even when controlling for other religiosity and sociodemographic variables. I also find that the belief in hell mediates the effect of the belief in heaven on attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide, suggesting that the fear of hell, more so than the reward of heaven, may lead people to have negative attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: An Exploration of Religious Forces on Support for the Death Penalty

AbstractCapital punishment originated with the earliest tribes, but in recent decades more than 140 countries have abolished the death penalty. Despite the opposition of many U.S. religious organizations, the majority of Americans favor the use of the death penalty. The role of religion in support for capital punishment remains unclear because most faiths contain opposing messages of punishment and redemption. This study seeks to provide a better understanding of this often contradictory relationship between religion and support for the death penalty. Using data from the 2008 wave of the General Social Survey, the authors explore how spirituality, religiosity, beliefs about the afterlife, theism, and religious tradition influence one's opinion of the death penalty. Results from robust Poisson regression show that religiosity decreases support for the death penalty, but a belief in Hell strongly increases support for punitive forms of corporeal justice. Uncertainty in the existence of an afterlife and the existence of Heaven also significantly affect support for the death penalty. Independent of these factors, conservatism had the largest effects on support for capital punishment. The divergent effects of religious expression are discussed.

Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction by Kathryn Gin Lum

Reviewed by: Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction by Kathryn Gin Lum Kyle T. Bulthuis (bio) Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction. By Kathryn Gin Lum. ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Pp. 310. Cloth, $31.95.) Kathryn Gin Lum's Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction is an impressive work that explores antebellum Americans' persistent belief in hell, and why that belief mattered to both individuals and society. Undergirding this book is a deep consideration of a continuous evangelical community who set the terms of the discourse. Gin Lum follows leading clergy, from Jonathan Edwards to Charles Grandison Finney, and beyond, to explain how among evangelicals the concept of hell was a moving target, refining and adapting to opponents' criticisms and contemporary contexts. All evangelicals retained an insistence that "we" (evangelicals) held absolute truth, and without full acceptance of their message, "they" (outsiders) were eternally damned. This common characteristic trumped other differences. After the Revolution, Universalists directly opposed the evangelical hell-raisers. Two men, born in the same year and both named John Murray, distinguished by the nicknames "Salvation" and "Damnation," defended the opposing positions. Both Salvation and Damnation Murray focused largely on the social utility of their respective theologies, particularly in the cultivation of virtue. Each feared the other's theology would undermine order in the new republic. While the argument of Damnation Murray gained more adherents in general, his strict Calvinism gave way to a wider variety of evangelical expressions about God and salvation in the Second Great Awakening. [End Page 593] Antebellum Protestants occasionally expressed anxiety over the state of their own souls, but Gin Lum notes that over time more evangelicals feared hell less for themselves than for their kin, creating in them a great sense of responsibility and anxiety for others. Missionaries and sensitive laity also bemoaned the fates of pagan sinners at home and heathens abroad. Most American Protestants considered white middle-class norms to be good indicators of salvation; consequently, damnation was more likely for those "others" who looked and acted differently from the Anglo American majority. Hell thus heightened both crusading impulses and, likely, racial chauvinism. Gin Lum surveys a variety of dissenters from the evangelical vision of hell. These ranged from prostitutes, drunkards, and gamblers who indifferently scoffed at minsters' threats, to liturgically inclined Catholics who embraced cycles of sin and absolution that rendered their path to hell different from Protestants. (Strangely, despite their orthodox acceptance of hell, Catholics rarely appear in the work except as evangelical foils.) Groups such as the Swedenborgians, Mormons, and Spiritualists consigned hell to a small place in the afterlife, variously stressing progression through realms of heaven, multiple heavens, or evolutionary advancement of the mind as possibilities. Even some Protestants softened their rhetoric, with Horace Bushnell and Catharine Beecher, among others, emphasizing the ideal that nurturing mothers would lead far more souls into heaven than prior generations supposed. Surprisingly, Universalists do not reappear as a group after the early chapters, despite their outsized influence as direct opponents of the doctrine: This is one rare oversight in the book. Gin Lum notes that the nonwhite heathen provided a particularly difficult challenge to evangelical tropes. Insightful Indian prophets and natives throughout the world turned the concept of hell on their missionary visitors, suggesting that hell might be reserved for those whites whose greed, violence, and closed-mindedness revealed far more damnable behavior. When applied to slavery, rhetoric about hell grew from unwieldy to untrammelled. Early abolitionists mourned that slavery damaged the moral facilities of slaves, thus consigning them to hell; pro-slavery Christians agreed enough to call for evangelization, not abolition. Abolitionists countered with depictions of slavery as hell on earth, and for those acts condemned slaveholders to eternal torment. Slaveholders responded in kind, suggesting abolitionists would earn hell for sanctioning lawlessness and violence. Finally, William Lloyd Garrison and his [End Page 594] allies, despite often holding religious unorthodoxy regarding hell for the individual, suggested the entire nation might be damned for its unwillingness to address the sin of slavery. The Civil War serves as a culmination and continuation of Gin Lum's narrative. Throughout...

Does Religion Matter for Savings Habit of Households in Ghana ?

Some studies have found that church attendance is negatively associated with economic growth and that belief in hell or heaven is positively associated with economic growth. The implication of this assertion is that ‘believing rather than belonging’ is what matters for economic performance as far as religion is concerned. Using logistic regression model on the data set of a metropolitan area, we have provided another evidence to further the empirical scholarship on the effect of religion on economic performance .We showed that church attendance perversely affects savings but belief may not matter significantly for savings decision of household after we have controlled for liquidity constraint, family ties and income uncertainty. We found that savings is negatively related to church attendance but belief in hell does not matter for household savings.

The Emotional Toll of Hell: Cross-National and Experimental Evidence for the Negative Well-Being Effects of Hell Beliefs

Though beliefs in Heaven and Hell are related, they are associated with different personality characteristics and social phenomena. Here we present three studies measuring Heaven and Hell beliefs' associations with and impact on subjective well-being. We find that a belief in Heaven is consistently associated with greater happiness and life satisfaction while a belief in Hell is associated with lower happiness and life satisfaction at the national (Study 1) and individual (Study 2) level. An experimental priming study (Study 3) suggests that these differences are mainly driven by the negative emotional impact of Hell beliefs. Possible cultural evolutionary explanations for the persistence of such a distressing religious concept are discussed.

Does Hell Still Have a Future?

In 1998 the Polish writer, Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), observed: ''In my lifetime Heaven and Hell disappeared...After two thousand years in which a huge edifice of creeds and dogmas had been erected, from Origen and St Augustine to Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman, when every work of the human mind and of human hands was created within a system of reference, the age of homelessness has dawned.'' The new circumstances in which Christianity now exists are acknowledged by most commentators nowadays. And it must be admitted that, as regards belief in hell, specifically, the future doesn't look too bright, even in the judgement of mainstream theologians.

Hell and Its Afterlife: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Isabel Moreira and Margaret Toscano. Farmham, U.K.: Ashgate, 2010. xvi + 266 pp. $99.95 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)While heaven has been a major topic of recent analysis and conversation, thanks in part to several best-selling books on the subject, hell has been much less discussed and evaluated. Although sizable numbers of Americans continue to profess belief in hell's existence, most of them prefer to ignore the subject. The subject of hell has also received little scholarly attention in recent decades. Therefore, this wide-ranging and impressively researched book is a valuable resource that contributes substantially to our understanding of the topic.In Hell and Its Afterlife , professors of History, English, Religious Studies, Classics, and Media Arts who teach in Canada, England, Switzerland, and the United States examine the place and prominence of hell in the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions during the past two and half millennia. They show that the idea that flagrant sinners will be perpetually punished in an infernal locale has a long history both as a religious concept and a cultural metaphor. Whether hell has been considered an actual place or a figurative idea, it has often been strongly asserted and its nature has been fiercely debated because hell has served as a vehicle for discussing such paramount issues as human identity . . . justice, forgiveness, suffering, political affiliation, and death (1). According to the editors, these essays show that hell has served the positive purposes of arguing that souls exist eternally, providing reassurance that divine judgment will be just, and affirming cosmic meaningfulness, even in the midst of monumental suffering (2). Negatively, hell has been used to condemn people without any recourse, stigmatize others, repudiate fellowship, and destroy loving relationships. Moreover, in various eras the concept of hell has been employed to highlight the power, love, and justice of God and the crucial role of the church in salvation. Emphasis on the horrors of hell has encouraged individuals to reflect on their sinfulness, repent of their wrongdoing, and act morally.These essays cover much ground both historically and thematically: they analyze how hell was perceived in ancient Roman and Greek culture; in medieval society, post-Reformation England, and Spanish America; by evangelicals, Mormons, and James Joyce; and in contemporary urban communities, comic books, horror films, and the war on terror. Several essays specifically and the book as a whole make the same argument about hell that I make in my book Heaven in the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011) about heaven: conceptions of the afterlife have changed substantially over time in response to the cultural trends, problems, and concerns of various eras. In many ways, images of hell (and heaven) reflect prevailing cultural assumptions about what and who is valued and despised. For example, by the nineteenth century, as greater emphasis was placed on the dignity and worth of individuals and rehabilitation began to replace painful, punitive treatment of lawbreakers, hell came to be viewed much less as a place of physical torments. …

Religiousness and Mood in the Last Week of Life: An Explorative Approach Based on After-Death Proxy Interviews

Although religiousness may, to a certain extent, be expected to alleviate emotional suffering in the last week of life, some religious beliefs might also provoke emotional distress. For the current study, after-death interviews with proxy respondents of deceased sample members of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam provided information on depressive mood and anxiety in the last week of life, as well as on the presence of a sense of peace at the approaching end of life. Proxy respondents also were asked about serious physical symptoms in the last week of life of the respondent, the respondent's cognitive decline, and their estimate of the salience of religion for the sample member. Other characteristics were derived from the last interviews with the sample members when still alive: depressive symptoms, chronic diseases, religious affiliation, church attendance, belief in Heaven, belief in Hell, and salience of religion. None of the characteristics of religiousness was significantly associated with depressive mood or anxiety, as estimated by the proxy respondent. A sense of peace, however, was predicted by higher church attendance, belief in Hell (among church-members), and the proxy's estimate of the salience of religion. It can be concluded that religiousness did not affect depressive mood or anxiety in the last week of life in the current sample. It is possible that religiousness supports a sense of peace, which may be a more-existential facet of mood and is discussed as relevant in the last phase of life and in palliative care.

WHAT PREDICTS RELIGIOUS PARTICIPATION AND GIVING? IMPLICATIONS FOR RELIGION IN THE UNITED STATES

In this article, we test whether or not positive/negative sanctioning increases religious behavior. Using data from the 1998 congregational module of the General Social Survey we find that, net of other predictors, immediate positive sanctions (receiving help from the congregation) and immediate negative sanctions (receiving criticism from the congregation) significantly increase the amount of money given by respondents to religious organizations. Our results also indicate that sanctions promised in the future (belief in Heaven and belief in Hell) have little to no effect on religious giving. Furthermore, we find that immediate positive and negative sanctions as well as future negative sanctions predict greater participation in religious organizations, while future positive sanctions show no such effects. The results are discussed in the context of the emerging trend of waning religious involvement in the contemporary United States.

The big carrot: High‐stakes incentives revisited

AbstractUsing an international dataset of about 35 000 subjects, this paper provides an empirical example of high‐stakes incentives in relation to religious practice. First, we show that incentives (based on absolute belief) play a salient role in religious performance. Second, we find that when both positive (heaven) and negative (hell) incentives are available the former are more effective than the latter. Specifically, it is shown that beliefs in heaven are much more relevant than beliefs in hell when estimating the production of religious commodities (church‐attendance and praying equations). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Religious Beliefs, Sociopolitical Ideology, and Attitudes Toward Corporal Punishment

The use of corporal punishment to discipline children remains a perennial focus of controversy. Several studies published in the 1990s linked support for, and use of, corporal punishment with religious factors, particularly core doctrines of conservative (i.e., evangelical and fundamentalist) Protestantism. This study reexamines the relationships between religious beliefs and attitudes toward corporal punishment using data from the 1998 National Opinion Research Center General Social Survey, which contains an extensive special module of items tapping aspects of religious doctrine. The authors also consider the implications of the “culture wars” thesis, which suggests that sociopolitical ideology—in addition to, or instead of—religious factors may shape corporal punishment attitudes. Findings underscore the importance of conservative Protestant beliefs, especially hierarchical images of God and belief in Hell, but not denominational affiliation. Sociopolitical conservatism is independently related to support for corporal punishment, but controlling for ideology does not substantially reduce the estimated net effects of religious factors.

The Big Carrot: High Stake Incentives Revisited

This paper provides an empirical demonstration of high stakes incentives in relation to religious practice. It shows that, when both positive (carrot) and negative (stick) incentives are available, the former are more effective than the latter. Specifically, it is shown that beliefs in heaven are much more relevant than beliefs in hell when estimating the production of religious commodities (church-attendance and praying equations).

The Revival Of The Cult Of Purgatory In France (1850–1914)

Abstract The cult of souls in purgatory underwent a massive revival in France during the second half of the nineteenth century and recorded, at least down to the Great War, a success that made a stunning contemporary impact. The importance of the cult of the dead, the hopes and fears it aroused among the clergy, the necessity of striking an expiatory balance between the decline of belief in Hell and the hope of going to Heaven, plus the desire to counteract those developments that called into question the Catholic belief in ‘last things’, all help to explain the phenomenon. The nineteenth-century movement, which was situated in the context of a long history of belief in purgatory, was endowed with specific features, on the doctrinal as well as on the devotional and institutional levels. The two most significant innovations were prayers for ‘abandoned souls’, and the recourse to souls in purgatory as intercessors for the living. In welcoming the advent of this thaumaturgical dimension, which had hitherto been lacking, the cult was provided with a solid foundation, which turned the nineteenth century into the age par excellence of the cult of souls in Purgatory.