Religious Belonging Research Articles

Religious belongings and Covid-19 vaccination

IntroductionVaccine hesitancy poses a complex global challenge. Our study investigates correlations between COVID-19 vaccination rates, religious demographics, and educational performance.Materials and methodsUsing cross-sectional analysis, data from reputable sources were analyzed for correlations using Pearson’s correlation and linear regression.ResultsWe found statistically significant positive correlations between COVID-19 vaccination rates and PISA scores, Catholic populations, non-religious, and atheist populations. Conversely, negative correlations were observed with Muslim and Eastern Orthodox populations. Our findings suggest potential influences of religious beliefs and educational attainment on vaccination rates.ConclusionThe data reveals a positive correlation between COVID-19 vaccination rates and the percentages of Catholic, Non-Religious, and Atheist populations, while indicating a negative correlation between COVID-19 vaccination rates and the percentages of Muslim and Eastern Orthodox populations. These findings underscore the potential significance of engaging religious leaders in promoting vaccinations as a strategy to address vaccine hesitancy.

Multiple Religious Belonging among Congregation Members of the United Indonesian Jewish Community and Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue

This research aimed to elaborate on the Indonesian Jewish community, represented by The United Indonesian Jewish Community led by Rabbi Benjamin Meijer Verbrugge and Sha'ar Hashamayim Synagogue under the spiritual guidance of Rabbi Yaakov Baruch. This research followed the theoretical framework of multiple religious belonging (MRB), pioneered by Catherine Cornille (1961–). This research combined primary data from in-depth interviews conducted offline and online with congregation members of both communities, as well as an extensive literature review. This research commenced its analysis by considering the conflicting religious identities of Indonesian Jews within their Indonesian identity card (Kartu Tanda Penduduk, abbreviated KTP in Bahasa Indonesia), which eventually investigated the identity of Indonesian Jews. This research concluded that MRB’s scientific schema, consisting of elements of Cultural Belonging, Family Belonging, Situational Belonging, Believing without Belonging, and Asymmetrical Belonging, may not fit entirely to the theological concern of Indonesian Jews, yet some of its elements may fit into a more secular, lower, context of ‘Civil’ Identity. The ambiguity of the existence of Indonesian Jews prevails because they are Jewish, practising Jewish rituals, and firmly committed to Jewish tradition, yet cannot conceal their Jewish identity fully in their KTP. Further investigation concerning their level of religiosity and how their Jewishness is practiced may invite further research.

Of Welfare, Sacred Places, and “Rice Christians”: Freedom of Religion and Multiple Religious Belonging

Abstract When governments are structurally unable to provide social services, or when disaster strikes, relief organisations tend to step in. This is also the case in South and East Asia. Such organisations may be faith-based, leading to the emergence of what Asians colloquially call “rice Christians”: persons who (allegedly) convert to a religion in order to access services, or out of loyalty to the aid-supplying organisation. Such converts may continue to practice their traditional religions and beliefs. This raises the question whether rights to religion or belief are still available to “rice Christians” when governments, e.g., seek to redevelop a sacred site that formed part of their original belief system. The present article addresses that question, drawing upon the concept of multiple religious belonging (‘mrb’) and a 2017 decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in which the court accepted that individuals may adhere to multiple religions, especially where conversion happened within a missionary context and the now-claimed belief is Indigenous or traditional. It argues in favour of recognition of mrb within the context of freedom of religion, which would mean that also “rice Christians” can continue to rely on original belief systems to protect their practices and places.

Religious Belonging and Gender Roles of Christian Female Students in a Private University: A Case Study of a Private University, Lahore, Pakistan

Religious Belonging and Gender Roles of Christian Female Students in a Private University: A Case Study of a Private University, Lahore, Pakistan

“I’ll Walk with You”: LGBTQ+ Individuals and Religious Belonging

ABSTRACT Research on LGBTQ+ individuals, belonging, and religiosity has been mixed. Some studies have illustrated the ways religion can harm LGBTQ+ individuals while others suggest religion has positive impacts. In the current study, we sought to understand this complexity by examining the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals who have been or currently are affiliated with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e. Mormon, LDS). A thematic analysis of 100 interviews with LGBTQ+ individuals currently or previously affiliated with the Church revealed various ways they feel belonging or the lack thereof in Latter-day Saint congregations and communities. These include sharing physical space, being invited to and included at events, receiving gifts or acts of service, seeing others’ safety signals, hearing accepting and character-affirming language, and having others listen to them and give them voice. With the intent of fostering belonging, we discuss implications of this research for church communities and propose the belonging in practice: LGBTQ+ and religion model.

Rite and Stone: Religious Belonging and Urban Space in Global Perspective

Over long periods, interdisciplinary debates in urban studies on the relationships between religion and urban space were influenced by mainstream versions of modernization theory. These were based on the binary of urban modernity and nonurban (religious) tradition. However, historical urban research has shown that cities were also more often sites of religious innovation. Inspired by Jennifer Robinson’s understanding of cities as “ordinary” sites of sociality, with this special issue we contribute to this vibrant debate on religion and urbanism. The articles in it examine the role of places of worship as spatial and urban projects and address the following questions: How do religious actors become spatial entrepreneurs whose spatial projects shape cities? Which religiously motivated social and material forms emerge in cities? What are the practices and regimes that contribute to the spatialization of religion? How does the nature of places of worship alter and adapt to rapidly changing urban environments? And what are the consequences of religious buildings and other material forms for the social reality of cities? We argue that in contrast to former periods, when religious buildings were considered and constructed as authoritative buildings, these buildings are now much more fluid. Broad social transformations profoundly changed the roles played by and the social meanings attributed to them. Religious buildings and informal religious sites are not mere static architectural structures but bring with them a wide variety of spatial, economic, political, affective, and spiritual investments which make their construction, presence, and transformation a slippery object for urban planning logics and experts.

Measuring Religiosity of East Asians: Multiple Religious Belonging, Believing, and Practicing

AbstractSocial surveys normally assume that respondents adhere to a single religious faith in belonging, believing, and practicing congruently. Some surveys even take religious identity as the singular measure of religiosity and examine its relationship with other variables. This practice, however, fails to capture nonexclusive and hybrid religiosity, which is arguably the traditional and normal pattern in East Asia while becoming increasingly common in the West. We have developed a new set of survey questions and conducted a survey among East Asian international students at an American university. The findings show that multiple religious belonging, believing, and practicing are quite common, the level of believing and participating in religions varies substantially, and no confession‐based single measure of religious identity or practice is sufficient for measuring religiosity. We recommend this set of improved measures of religiosity be adopted in future surveys in East Asia and probably in the West as well.

Assessing population substructure in the Lebanese population: A population study using data on 23 autosomal short tandem repeats.

Understanding the genetic substructure of a population is essential for proper forensic genetic analysis. The Lebanese population has a high rate of endogamous and consanguineous marriages and is segregated based on religious belongings. However, no genetic population studies have been performed up to date to estimate the degree of genetic substructure and inbreeding coefficients. The present study analyzed a compendium of 23 autosomal STRs typed in 1400 individuals belonging to the seven major Lebanese religious subcommunities. Inbreeding coefficients such as F statistics were estimated. Results showed a Fst (theta) value of 0.002, indicating a low genetic subdivision within the Lebanese population. This study aimed at assessing the genetic substructure of the Lebanese population by analyzing 1400 Lebanese citizens' samples using 23 STR markers. F statistics were computed to evaluate the degree of genetic substructure. Results showed a Fst value of 0.002, indicating a low genetic subdivision within the Lebanese population.

Spiritual Power, Witchcraft and Protestants: Conflicting Approaches to Religious Belonging and Practice in the Komi Countryside

Abstract In this article we aim to explore how vernacular ideas about spiritual power, words, and silence shape perceptions of religion and witchcraft among the rural Komi people, whose predominant religion is Russian Orthodoxy. In this framework we investigate local ideas of witchcraft, belonging, and strangeness. During our joint ethnographic fieldwork trips to the Komi Republic, Russia, these notions were evoked repeatedly in discussions concerning the Evangelical Protestants who established their mission in a village historically associated with witches. This particular coincidence is reflected in discourses that brand the Evangelicals culturally alien, drawing on both traditional and contemporary categories of otherness. Our analysis shows that ideas about magical power and the usage of words constitute significant aspects of vernacular understanding of faith regardless of formal denominational belonging. We claim that religious practices are switched more spontaneously than feelings of spiritual power and traditionally accepted religious belonging among the rural Komi.

Multiple Religious Belonging and Religious Communities

This contribution investigates the concept “community” as a previously underexplored dimension of multiple religious belonging (MRB). A review of the MRB approach to multireligiosity reveals there has been paid relatively little attention to community influence and fluid, non-dualistic styles of religious belonging. We argue that these styles of multiple belonging cannot be accounted for by conventional understandings of MRB that assume a “World Religions Paradigm.” After reviewing two approaches to this problem, the article explores a rhizomatic approach to MRB and religious communities. To illustrate this approach, a brief review of several Dutch multireligious communities is presented.

Where Does Ascribed Privilege Get You in? Structural and Net Effects of Caste and Religious Belonging in India

Socio-economically advantaged upper castes tend to claim that Indian society is ‘post-caste’, suggesting that individuals from historically marginalized castes and religious groups do not face specific social barriers when attempting to move into white-collar positions. Alleged intergenerational mobility and the emergence of a ‘new middle class’ related to the growth of the private sector is widely used to counter affirmative action initiatives in higher education and public-sector recruitment. In this article, I test these claims by examining Brahmin, lower caste Dalit and Muslim patterns of intergenerational class and educational mobility of father–child pairs. I point to the strong role of caste and religion in shaping one’s destination, particularly when accessing top occupational positions in the private sector. These results question the meritocratic and casteless claims of the Indian ‘new middle class’ in post-liberalization India, and they call for more encompassing policies reducing origin-based inequality.

Religious Belonging and Multinational Encounters in “Infidel Izmir”

Abstract In Turkey, the Roman Catholic Church faces an uncertain future as it lacks official recognition of its legal status. Thus, the survival of the small parishes signifies the survival of the Catholic Church in contemporary Turkey. This article focuses on the perseverance of the multicultural Roman Catholic community of Our Lady of Lourdes (Notre Dame de Lourdes) of Göztepe (in Izmir) after the arrival of Father Gabriel Ferone in 2008. The revival of Our Lady of Lourdes resulted from people of different backgrounds (i.e., Europeans, African students, Turks) moving to Izmir and joining this parish. The paper also explores the change in the demography of the parish during its transformation throughout the years.

Spiritual Care Needs of Patients in Oncology Units and Nursing Practices in Turkey: A Qualitative Study.

This descriptive qualitative study was planned to determine the spiritual care needs of patients hospitalized in the oncology department and nursing care practices. Twenty-five patients and 15 nurses were interviewed. Concerning the spiritual care practices expected from nurses, the following themes were determined: Interest-Compassion, Smiling Face, Confidence, Being Informative, Morale, and Understanding. The themes for spiritual nursing practices were Chatting-Suggesting, Smiling Face, Giving Opportunities for Religious Practice, Love and Belonging, Giving Hope-Precedent Examples, and Giving Information. Patients expected nurses to ask about their spiritual needs. However, nurses did not ask about spiritual issues because they were afraid of affecting patients adversely.

Grief

What does it mean to have faith? If you have absolute proof God did not exist, would it change your moral duty to others? In this work of philosophical short story fiction God, literally, lives in a temple as a being among the people. He has guided and instructed them for centuries until, one day, he declares he has nothing more to teach, and leaves. The local clergy go into a period of grief while the cities fall into lawless chaos. The clergy/narrator, likewise, falls into a deep depression as he sees the temples and religious infrastructures quickly fall into disarray. He meets at the “first temple” with the remaining leaders who are equally distraught and lack answers. He burns his religious belongings and falls into a deep depression. His church is ransacked and later turned into an elementary school. In the end, narrator gets a job working at a museum.

Buddhist Ritual as “Connectionwork”: Aesthetics and Technologies of Mediating Religious Belonging

Abstract In September 2016, the Himalayan Buddhist festival Naropa 2016 took place in the Northwest Himalayan region of Ladakh, India. This article analyzes the spectacular aesthetics of the Naro Gyen Druk ritual, the focus of Naropa 2016. Drawing on ethnographic documentation of this ritual, I consider the role of ritual aesthetics in provoking affective, emotional, and bodily experiences among participants and their felt connections to the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa, the charismatic leader of the Drukpa Kagyü organization. I introduce the term “connectionwork” to emphasize how Buddhist conceptualizations of connections, drelwa (‘brel ba), bring to light how ritual and performances of charisma either work or fail to work in establishing religious belonging among Himalayan and international participants. Connectionwork helps to emphasize not only the work to organize and orchestrate religious rituals with the intention to institute religious belonging, but also the agential role that participants play in charismatic ritual performances.

Feasting with Buddhist Women: Food Literacy in Religious Belonging

Abstract This ethnographic study shows that women’s knowledge and practices involving food in Japanese Buddhist contexts circulate as gendered currency. It emphasizes how what we term “food literacy” cultivates aesthetic and affective senses of belonging among Buddhist practitioners. We argue that this embodied knowledge helps women negotiate their experiences of Buddhism and show how these experiences articulate the complexities of their bounded and self-disciplining Buddhist selves. Women use food literacy to teach, learn, and practice the way Buddhism feels and etch it into their own and others’ emotional, social, and material bodies. By recognizing women as stewards of religion, particularly through food literacy, we also elucidate how women’s uses of mundane practices illuminate food literacy as a value carrier that generates belonging through food. Such practices can equally become sites of failure to connect if the intended recipients do not share understandings or appreciations of the aesthetic and affective dimensions of it.

The Aesthetics and Emotions of Religious Belonging: Examples from the Buddhist World

Abstract The articles in this special issue illuminate the importance of aesthetics, affect, and emotion in the formation of religious communities through examples from the Buddhist world. This introduction reads across the contributors’ findings from different regions (China, India, Japan, and Tibet) and eras (from the 17th to the 21st centuries) to highlight common themes. It discusses how Buddhist communities can take shape around feelings of togetherness, distance, and absence, how bonds are forged and broken through spectacular and quotidian aesthetic forms, and how aesthetic and emotional practices intersect with doctrinal interpretations, gender, ethnicity, and social distinction to shape the moral politics of religious belonging. We reflect on how this special issue complicates the idea of Buddhist belonging through its focus on oft-overlooked practices and practitioners. We also discuss the insights that our studies of Asian Buddhist communities offer to the broader study of religious belonging.

The Social Functionality of Multiple Religious Belonging in Modern China

Abstract Multiple religious belonging refers to the idea that individuals can belong to more than one religious tradition. This article aims to explore the concept of multiple religious belonging in modern China, focusing on its pattern as well as the social functionality that gives rise to such a pattern. The methodology is developed using structural functionalism as formulated by, in particular, Emile Durkheim, who investigated how different institutions, practices, and customs come to exist because of their contribution to the reproduction and integration of society. This article studies the social functions of multiple religious belonging in three social units, from small to large: family, community, and the state. It explains how multiple religious belonging functions in modern China and thus consolidates each member’s identity within the social units.

“I’m just British—normal British”: Exploring Teachers’ and Pupils’ Conceptualisations of Religion(s) and Religious Belonging

ABSTRACT This article seeks to foreground the voices of primary school teachers and children—often silenced in research—and explore how they understand religion(s) and religious belonging. The findings draw on qualitative data investigating the narratives of teachers and pupils from five primary community schools in the West Midlands (England). The research shows that religious traditions in contemporary Religious Education classes still tend to be constructed as un-diverse, impermeable, monolithic wholes as teachers rely on the dominant World Religions Paradigm. As religions as lived tend to be ignored, children find it difficult to situate themselves within debates and conversations pertaining to religion(s) and religious diversity and consequently tend to speak about ‘others’ and imagined ‘them’. As a result, most children believe that RE is learning about the ‘Other’ and tend to construct ‘world religions’ as un-British. The article concludes that, overall, RE fails to challenge static representations of religion(s) and rigid categorisations and that the subject ought to offer alternative representations of religious beliefs and practices by foregrounding the lived realities of children and religious communities.

Images of Place, Secularity and Gentrification: On Urban Religious Belonging in an Inner City Neighbourhood in Oslo

Through extensive fieldwork conducted in an inner city neighbourhood in Oslo, Norway, the authors found that a variation of actors and settings evoked different religious and secular images of place. In what ways is the urban experience shaping or challenging the religious sense of spatial belonging, and why is a secular discourse dominating the scene? In order to obtain such images and sense of place in the context of a recently established area based initiative, we interviewed representatives for the religious communities localized in the neighbourhoods of Tøyen and Grønland. Here we encountered no religiously infused language despite a sizeable spatial religious presence. In the sciences of religion, the view of a separation between the secular and the religious as a social fact and a social norm in modern societies dominates. We argue that there is a privatization of religion (Casanova 1994) within the larger discourse of urban renewal and gentrification. Simultaneously we find the reverse of Taylor’s (2007) proposal of the emptying of religion in social space: namely a filling up of religion in social spaces, that we label ‘urban religious belonging’. This article provides further empirically based knowledge into the connection of religion, secularism and the urban sphere, the difference between belief and representations or discourses, as well as a methodological approach for studying these connections and fractures.