Evangelical Christian Communities Research Articles

Making a Home, Keeping God Close

Abstract In Evangelical Christian communities, the responsibility for maintaining the home is taken up primarily by women (Bartkowski, 1999; Gallagher & Smith, 1999). The discursive construction of the home as a sacred space free from toxic influences emerged during the Cold War, when the global turmoil seemed to demand the delineation of a matriarchal safe space (Shively, 2017; Neumann, 2019; Anagnost 2013). More recently, restrictions concerning covid-19 have initiated a further shift from the public to the private sphere. Women who were accustomed to conducting housework while their husbands were at work have abruptly come to the foreground as life primarily took place at home. This article explores the intersection of daily activities with religious beliefs as reflected in the practice of blogging. Central to this study is the assumption that ordinary, daily activities provide a unique lens into the way people ‘in the pews’ live their lives.

Women in the American Scientific Affiliation: Past, Present, and Future

Roles of women in STEM fields, including social and natural sciences, have changed significantly since WWII. Studying the inclusion of women in the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) provides a distinctive gender-based case study related to Christian mission and the evangelical Christian community. Analysis of fifty years of news­letters, leadership statistics, and membership numbers illuminates the story of women over time. The history of women in the ASA parallels the larger advancement of women, while also illuminating unique challenges within the evangelical Christian context.

‘Mad, bad, or possessed’? Perceptions of Self-Harm and Mental Illness in Evangelical Christian Communities

Mental illness within evangelical Christian communities is frequently stigmatised, with many attributing it exclusively to demonic possession, lack of faith, personal sin, or other negative spiritual influences. This study explores perceptions of self-harm in the context of evangelical Christian faith communities using the novel qualitative story completion task. A convenience sample of 101 UK-based evangelical Christians completed a third-person fictional story stem featuring a devout female Christian who self-harms. A contextualist informed thematic analysis was carried out focusing on perceptions of cause, cure, and treatment. Most stories positioned spiritual causes of mental illness (that is, demonic possession or personal sin) as harmful to the individual by rendering individuals as stigmatised objects or as socially displaced. The stories also provided insight into negative perceptions of females experiencing mental illness within evangelical communities. The stories suggested that these views often led to stigma and shame, which ultimately exacerbated illness and led to reduced help-seeking. Conversely, stories depicting the integration of relational care alongside spiritual resources frequently led to recovery. That the stories represented the need for relational support, within a spiritually syntonic framework, for recovery from mental illness highlights the limitations of a dichotomised approach to pastoral care. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the usefulness of a seldom-used tool within the pastoral psychology context – the story completion task – for accessing sociocultural discourses and wider representations surrounding stigmatised topics or populations.

"It's easy to dismiss it as simply a spiritual problem." Experiences of mental distress within evangelical Christian communities: A qualitative survey.

Evidence suggests that faith communities can support psychological wellbeing but can also potentially diminish wellbeing through stigma, imposed spiritualization, and marginalization. In particular, for evangelical Christianity, whose theological praxis typically accentuates literalist spiritual onto-etiologies, including the belief that mental distress can be treated solely through spiritual intervention (prayer, fasting, and deliverance), there may be negative implications for Christians with mental distress. The current qualitative survey examined the responses of 293 self-identified evangelical Christians, concerning their experiences of mental distress in relation to their church community. An inductive thematic analysis revealed five themes: 1) Tensions between Faith and Suffering; 2) Cautions about a Reductive Spiritualization; 3) Feeling Othered and Disconnected; 4) Faith as Alleviating Distress; and 5) Inviting an Integrationist Position. Findings reveal stigma and the totalizing spiritualization of mental distress can be experienced as both dismissive and invalidating and can problematize secular help-seeking. This lends support to previous research which has suggested that evangelical Christian communities tend to link mental distress to spiritual deficiencies, which can hold potentially negative consequences for their wellbeing. Nevertheless, a degree of complexity and nuance emerged whereby spiritual explanations and interventions were also experienced as sometimes helpful in alleviating suffering. Overall, findings suggest evangelical communities are increasingly adopting integrationist understandings of mental distress, whereby spiritual narratives are assimilated alongside the biopsychosocial. We argue that church communities and psychotherapeutic practitioners should support movement from a position of dichotomizing psychological suffering (e.g., spiritual vs. biopsychosocial) towards a spiritually syntonic frame, which contextualizes distress in terms of the whole person. Considerations for psychotherapeutic practice and further research are made.

Mapping Stories of Cause and Cure Using Story Stem Completion: Mental Distress in the Evangelical Christian Community. A Study Protocol

Mapping Stories of Cause and Cure Using Story Stem Completion: Mental Distress in the Evangelical Christian Community. A Study Protocol

A qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis of evangelical Christian sex trafficking narratives

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis (QIMS) is to explore, categorize, and confront one of the powerful narratives present within the counter-trafficking movement—that of evangelical Christian communities in the United States. The authors focused on the analysis of scholarly ethnographies and autoethnographies (N=7) of the evangelical Christian counter-trafficking culture. The QIMS yielded four themes that can be used to explain and categorize the denouement that is often visible in evangelical sex trafficking narratives, including 1) the perfect victim, 2) sexual objectification, 3) rescue for a greater purpose, and 4) co-optation of narratives. Results of this study point to how laypeople, social workers, and professional activists can shape and promote survivor-centered narratives that more fully advance the human rights of sex trafficking survivors.

“Eu não quero palmas, eu quero almas” crenças e pertenças no rap evangélico da Grande Lisboa

This paperis based oninterviewswithfive rappers belonging to evangelical Christian communities and residing in Greater Lisbon and on the lyrics,they write and sing. Different subjects will be coveredas the identity they formulate in a double belonging to the street and tothe church,or the insertion of the repertoire and interviewsin the theological map of neo-Pentecostalism

Fostering Well-being through Social Support: The Role of Evangelical Communities in the Lives of Dominican Women of Haitian Descent.

Women of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic experience oppression due to their gender, ethnicity, and economic status. They also exhibit high rates of participation in evangelical Christian communities, a paradoxical finding given the restricted roles women have traditionally played in these settings. The goals of this study were to explore the perceived benefits of participation in evangelical communities and the setting characteristics that lead to these benefits. The research team interviewed 19 current and former church participants aged 18-59. Thematic analysis revealed three perceived benefits of congregational life. Participants viewed their participation as: (a) an opportunity for personal growth and development; (b) protective against negative social influences; and (c) providing social support in the face of life challenges. In addition, dependable, expected, and reciprocal relational support was a key characteristic of evangelical communities. Findings extend the current understanding of how religious communities enhance well-being for marginalized women through social support networks. Findings also explore the dialectical nature of settings as both empowering and disempowering. Implications for future interventions are discussed.

Promising Potency: Bio-evangelical Networking in a Korean Stem Cell Enterprise

ABSTRACT The notion of potency has been central in the shaping of the field of stem cell sciences. It not only offers a unique promissory quality to stem cells, but also an interpretive flexibility that can be exploited outside of the scientific research community. One Korea-based stem cell company actively exploits this aspect to amplify its promise of experimental stem cell therapy through an evangelical Christian network. The notion of stem cells' potency is at the crux of their discursive maneuvers that portray stem cells as a ‘gift that God has prepared in our body.' In their entrepreneurial endeavor to exploit business opportunities in evangelical Christian communities, the company strategically exploits the differences between two social worlds (that of the stem cell research community and of evangelical Christians), reflecting a process of ‘bio-evangelical networking'. The presumed religion/science divide, the grammar of miracles, the convention of religious witnessing, as well as faith in this-worldly blessings are actively sought and mobilized as a backdrop for the proliferation of stem cell promises in this religious niche. The notion of potency, once constructed, reformulated, and even fetishized in the scientific community’s effort to consolidate public support, thereby becomes a problem for the stem cell enterprise itself.

Listening to the Powerless: Experiences of People with Severe Intellectual Disabilities in an Evangelical Church

The experiences of people with severe intellectual disabilities (SID) in local churches are rarely studied, and their voices are not being heard in the research and religious communities. This study is an attempt to narrow the gap. Through a research method that combined person-centred care and action research, this study looks to explore the experiences of three persons with SID in a Hong Kong evangelical church, and give an account of the cultural and religious forces that have marginalized them. Findings show that it is not merely feasible but also necessary for church caregivers to listen to these powerless individuals if they want to be liberated from destructive stereotypical images of SID, broaden their basis of religious epistemology, and transform their spiritual care practices. However, the study reveals that there are some remaining barriers. It is found that the problematic evangelical style of spirituality has made Christians without disabilities misconceive individuals with SID as either inferior in the matter of faith or even incapable of coming to faith. Three corresponding types of pastoral responses that have kept persons with SID at the margins of the faith community are identified and discussed in this paper. The research results implies that evangelical Christian communities need nothing less than a critical examination of the logic of coming to faith if they want to remove such religious prejudice against persons with SID in future.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA: EVANGELICAL COMMUNITIES, CRITICAL JUNCTURES, AND INSTITUTIONAL INFRASTRUCTURES

Why has the religious right been more influential in the United States than in Canada? Traditional approaches to the study of social movements focus only on the life of the movement, from emergence to decline. Instead, I conduct a historical, comparative analysis on the premovement activities of evangelical Christian communities in these two countries from 1925–1975. Employing insights from historical institutionalism, I identify two critical junctures in the historical development of evangelical communities that suppressed the entrepreneurship and institution-building activities of Canadian evangelicals relative to those in the United States. I find that these divergences in institution building affected the size and strength of the institutional infrastructures—supportive organizations, networks, and resources—of the religious right movements in these countries. I argue that historical, comparative analysis in general, and historical institutionalism in particular, is useful to social movement scholarship's understanding of crossnational movement comparisons.

From Autonomy to Divinity: The Cultural Socialization of Moral Reasoning in an Evangelical Christian Community.

This study examined moral reasoning in parent-child conversations within a U.S. evangelical Christian community. The goal was to identify social-communicative processes that may promote the development of Divinity in children's moral reasoning. Sixteen parent-child dyads (6-9years old) discussed hypothetical moral vignettes about failures to help peers in need. Analyses revealed that Divinity typically co-occurred with Autonomy in these conversations and that such co-occurrences typically happened through three distinct social-communicative processes, labeled "align," "scaffold," and "counter." Findings are used to explain the shifting priority of Autonomy and Divinity over the life course among members of evangelical Christian faiths that previous research has documented. More broadly, findings highlight socialization processes through which children can rationalize their developing moral outlooks in culturally distinct ways.

Design and the digital Bible: persuasive technology and religious reading

This article analyses two ‘digital Bibles’, products that allow the user to engage with the Bible through the screen and speakers of his/her mobile phone, tablet or computer. Both products, ‘YouVersion’ and ‘GloBible’, have been created by Evangelical Christian companies. I argue that both are designed to train the user in traditional Evangelical Christian understandings of the work of reading. Digital media offer new opportunities to guide and influence the user, and this article applies the concepts of ‘persuasive technologies’ and ‘procedural rhetoric’ to analyse the design intentions of the two digital Bibles. This approach helps us to appreciate the significance of the material form of a sacred text as a vehicle for religious socialisation and raises important questions about the potential for digital media to re-shape traditional relationships of power in Evangelical Christian communities.

‘What about the wolves?’: The use of scripture in YouTube arguments

Reading and interpreting the Bible is an important practice in Evangelical Christian communities, both online and offline. Members of these communities employ biblical exegesis not only in convincing others about the validity of their beliefs, but also influencing the development of the social context in which they interact. Thus, reading and interpretation of the Bible serves both a theological purpose, allowing users to provide textual evidence for beliefs, and a practical social purpose, allowing users to map their own and others’ actions onto biblical texts, either to condone or to condemn them. For users who hold the same belief about the importance of the Bible in making moral judgements, the biblical text can be a particularly useful tool to position oneself and one’s actions. In this article, I employ concepts from positioning theory, to analyse how Evangelical Christian YouTube users read across the books of the Bible by treating similar uses of metaphorical language as interchangeable, and using them to position particular users and to make moral judgements about their actions. The analysis shows that reading and exegesis of scripture can be used in dynamic online environments to map characters and storylines from diverse biblical passages onto a particular online argument, providing a common resource for users from different backgrounds and contexts. Findings show that reading and interpretation of scriptures provide a powerful means of claiming authority for Evangelical Christians in the community, and are used to position oneself and one’s actions, influencing the subsequent discourse and emerging social context.

Gender Panic and the Failure of a Peace Agreement

Gender may have been one of the main reasons behind the rejection of the Peace Agreement in Colombia. A few hours after the narrow victory of those who opposed the deal, Senator and ex-president Álvaro Uribe Vélez gave a speech calling for the strengthening of religious family values. His words echoed an argument that gained traction in recent months in Colombia, particularly in the Evangelical Christian community: that the content of the Peace Accord dismantled traditional mores, such as the biological difference between man and woman, the importance of the heterosexual family, and the place of religion in public life.

Insult and Insecurity: Discernment, Trust, and the Uncanny in Two US Pentecostal Communities

Within many North American evangelical Christian communities, discernment denotes attentiveness to an interior voice that believers learn to identify as God’s. This article adopts a comparative perspective on everyday domains of perception and feeling that practices of discernment implicitly distinguish as unmarked by God’s activity, and as characterized by specific forms of anxiety from which believers desire to be redeemed. In a majority White Pentecostal congregation in suburban Buffalo, New York, believers cast emotional insecurity as a condition demanding redemption, while members of African American churches in the inner city hope to be redeemed from sensitivity to insults. While practices of discernment counter such anxieties by fostering forms of intimacy and trust, they also reinforce anxiety by focusing believers’ attention on how familiar relations may be distorted in uncanny ways.

SCIENTISTS AND RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES: INVESTIGATING PERCEPTIONS, BUILDING UNDERSTANDING

AbstractThe American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) program has embarked on an exciting project, “Scientists and Religious Communities: Investigating Perceptions to Build Understanding.” The project will provide the first quantitative data on the underlying assumptions and concerns that shape national attitudes on science. A nationally representative survey conducted in collaboration with sociologists at Rice University has reached 10,000 people, including evangelical Christians, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. The survey probed how a broad range of religious people, particularly evangelical Christians, understands and thinks about science, and what they perceive about scientists. Scientists, broadly defined, were likewise surveyed to gauge their perceptions of how religious people regard science. The goal for AAAS is to increase understanding between the scientific and evangelical Christian communities and redefine this critical relationship. DoSER will bring together leaders from scientific and evangelical communities to discuss the implications of survey results and to use them for building better understanding and communication strategies. Building relationships between scientists and religious communities has the potential to create a new paradigm of understanding. Finding out what each group actually thinks, through a survey, is only the beginning.

Beyond Fate and Hopelessness: The Need for a Contextual Approach to HIV/AIDS Prevention Programmes in the Evangelical Christian Community of French-Speaking Africa

Awareness, care and preventative action regarding HIV/AIDS, and those affected by it, is growing in the evangelical Christian Community in French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, even though the issues seem to be addressed through teaching and preaching in the churches, the real issues, questions and struggles of the people are not discussed. This article describes some of the most important outcomes of a qualitative research in this people group, looking at the values and beliefs around sexuality and community and what impact they have on current HIV/AIDS prevention practices and strategies. This description highlights the seeming discrepancy between people’s values and their daily lives, the role community can play – as both a community of grace and a countercultural yet contextually relevant community, and the role of leaders, grass-root communities and partnership processes in strategy development. This article argues for a contextual relevant approach in which the specific evangelical worldview is encountered as a possible strength, rather than a problem.

The Evangelical Sexual Marketplace: An Ethnographic Analysis of the Exchange and Conversion of Erotic Capital in an Evangelical Church

Since the development of the early church, sexual ethics and the regulation of heterosexual relationships have been integral parts of Christian religious practice. Evangelical Christian communities are no exception to this pattern of regulation. In particular, this article makes three key arguments regarding Evangelical sexual practices. First, heterosexual relationships and marriage have become one of the most important (if not the most important) aspects of Evangelical religious and social practice, surmounting both Baptism and the Eucharist. Second, those in the Evangelical sub-culture tend to find several qualities more or less attractive in a potential mate, some of which differ from those outside the sub-culture. Finally, within many Evangelical churches a defined social space—a sexual marketplace—exists where individual agents exchange and convert this commodity, among others, to attract potential marital partners. The author derives these conclusions from the ethnographic observations and interviews he conducted while attending an urban Canadian Pentecostal Church in 2009 and 2010.

Restoring the Lost Virtue of Prudential Justice to the Life Debate

Can a book about prudence survive in contemporary publication culture? This one will most definitely survive — and may indeed thrive if readers can handle constructive criticism that leads to greater good. Lamenting the loss of public virtue and the sad reality that political action and involvement has grown frustrating for the evangelical Christian community, Clarke Forsythe gently, empathetically, and thoughtfully reminds the prolife public that we are no more virtuous than our progressive proabortion counterparts when it comes to judicial activism, clarifying the need for a wiser solution.