Religious Composition Research Articles

Trade, Institutions and Religious Tolerance: Evidence from India

This paper analyses the incentives that shaped Hindu and Muslim interaction in India’s towns from the rise of Islam to the rise of European intervention in the 17th century; it argues that difierences in the degree to which medieval Hindus and Muslims could provide complementary, non-replicable services and a mechanism to share the gains from trade has resulted in a sustained legacy of religious tolerance. Due to Muslim-speciflc advantages in Indian Ocean shipping, incentives to trade across ethnic lines were strongest in medieval trading ports, leading to the development of institutions to support inter-religious exchange. Using new town-level data spanning India’s medieval and colonial history, this paper flnds that medieval trading ports were 25 percent less likely to experience a religious riot between 1850-1950, two centuries after Europeans eliminated Muslim advantages in overseas shipping. Medieval trading ports continued to exhibit fewer and less widespread religious violence during the Gujarat riots in 2002. The paper shows that these difierences are not the result of variation in geography, political histories, wealth, religious composition or of medieval port selection, and interprets these difierences as being transmitted via the persistence of institutions that emerged to support inter-religious medieval trade. The paper further characterises these institutions and the lessons they yield for reducing contemporary ethnic con∞ict.

Do Moral Communities Play A Role In Criminal Sentencing? Evidence from Pennsylvania

Religion and social control have been a sociological concern since Durkheim and Weber, and the relationship between religion and punishment has long been the subject of speculation. However, surprisingly little empirical research exists on the role of religion or religious context in criminal justice, and almost no research on the role of religious context on actual sentencing practices. We conceptualize the potential relationships between religious context and sentencing severity by drawing from the focal concerns and court community perspectives in the sentencing literature and from the moral communities theory developed by Rodney Stark. We suspect that Christian moral communities might shape notions of perceived blameworthiness for court community actors. Such moral communities might also affect notions of community protection—affecting perceptions of dangerousness, or perhaps rehabilitation, and might influence practical constraints/consequences (e.g., local political ramifications of harsh or lenient sentences). We examine these questions with a set of hierarchical models using sentencing data from Pennsylvania county courts and data on the religious composition of Pennsylvania counties from the Associated Religion Data Archives. We find that county Christian religious homogeneity increases the likelihood of incarceration. In addition, Christian homogeneity, as well as the prevalence of civically engaged denominations in a county condition the effects of important legally relevant determinants of incarceration. Furthermore, we find evidence that Christian homogeneity activates the effect of local Republican electoral dominance on incarceration. We argue that Christian homogeneity affects sentencing practices primarily through local political processes that shape the election of judges and prosecutors.

Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross Section of Countries

We provide a new compilation of data on ethnic, linguistic, and religious composition at the subnational level for a large number of countries. Using these data, we measure segregation of groups within the country. To overcome the endogeneity problem that arises because of mobility and endogenous internal borders, we construct an instrument for segregation. We find that more ethnically and linguistically segregated countries, i.e., those where groups live more spatially separately, have a lower quality of government; there is no relationship between religious segregation and governance. Trust is an important channel of influence; it is lower in more segregated countries. (JEL H11, H77, J15, O17, Z12, Z13)

Secularization and Religious Change among Elite Scientists

Sociologists of religion have often connected secularization to science, but have rarely examined the role of religion in the lives of scientists or how the sciences have changed religiously over time. Here we address this shortcoming by comparing religiosity between two samples of elite academic natural and social scientists, one in 1969 and one in 2005. Findings show an overall decline in religiosity among university scientists as well as a change in their religious composition. Attendance rates were lower for social scientists in 1969 compared to natural scientists, but in 2005 growing parity in attendance occurred between the two fields. Findings also show a decline in the proportion of Protestant scientists and a growth in Catholic scientists. Demographic factors associated with religiosity in the general population, with the exception of age and having children, had no impact among elite academic scientists. Overall, findings challenge and revise older studies on the role of religion in the lives of scientists. Specific results are connected to theories that pose science as a master identity, which may be mitigated by some institutionalized aspects of religion. They also lead to new directions in the sociology of religion that take seriously the role of religion in the lives of elites and connect societal religious changes to differences between institutional spheres, particularly those, such as the academy, that play a leadership role in society.

Siting the Death Penalty Internationally

We examine sources of variation in possession and use of the death penalty using data drawn from 193 nations in order to test theories of punishment. We find the death penalty to be rooted in a country's legal and political systems, and to be influenced by its religious traditions. A country's level of economic development, its educational attainment, and its religious composition shape its political institutions and practices, indirectly affecting its use of the death penalty. The article concludes by discussing likely future trends.

The problem of the confessional recruitment of the students at the Faculties of the Humanities and Science of the Transylvanian University

The problem of the confessional recruitment of the students at the Faculties of the Humanities and Science of the Transylvanian University

Tolerance for uncertainty and the growth of informationally opaque industries

Hofstede's [Hofstede, Geert H. 1980. Culture's consequences: international differences in work-related values. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.] cross-country psychological survey of IBM employees finds that some countries (societies) are systematically less tolerant of uncertainty, while uncertainty-tolerance is shown by some theoretic models to be essential to the growth of emerging sectors about which less is known. This paper first uses Durnev, Morck, and Yeung's [Durnev, Art, Morck, Randall, and Yeung, Bernard. 2004. Value-enhancing capital budgeting and firm-specific stock return variation. The Journal of Finance. 59(1): 65–105.] methodology to identify these informationally opaque industries. The hypothesis is then made that countries characterized by high uncertainty aversion (measured by Hofstede's indicator, and two other alternative indicators) will grow disproportionately slower in industrial sectors where information is less available. Using the Rajan and Zingales [Rajan, Raghuram G. and Zingales, Luigi. 1998. Financial Dependence and Growth. American Economic Review. Vol. 88(3): 559–586.] “difference-in-differences” methodology, which is relatively free from the endogeneity problem, the study provides robust evidence of such an industrial growth pattern in 34 countries and 36 manufacturing industries. It also shows that national uncertainty aversion is not driven by underdevelopment of financial sector, inadaptability of civil law systems, lower level of economic or human capital development, labor market inflexibility, or any of many other institutional factors. The results remain robust when religious (Catholic vs. Protestant) composition is used as an instrumental variable for national uncertainty aversion. The international evidence presented helps explain why some countries are slower in embracing “new” (vs. traditional) industries.

Press Freedom and Religion: Measuring the Association Between Press Freedom and Religious Composition

This exploratory study argues for the inclusion of religious composition variables as possible measures of press freedom. An analysis of press freedom and religious composition measures in 190 nations, along with correlation measures, reveals highly significant associations between the religious composition of nations and their level of press freedom. The study calls on future studies to further examine the association between religion and press freedom and argues for the inclusion of religious variables in future studies on press freedom.

From Theology to Technology: A Cross-National Analysis of the Determinants of Internet Diffusion

ABSTRACT An analysis of 190 nations revealed significant correlations between their religious composition and their internet diffusion rates. The study revealed a positive significant overall correlation between the percentage of Christians (in particular, Protestants) in a nation and internet diffusion. A significant negative correlation was found between the percentage of Muslims in nations and internet diffusion rates. The study discusses implications and calls upon future research to provide further analysis of the relationship between religion and internet diffusion.

Peter Klatzow's religious choral music

In this article Peter Klatzow's major religious compositions are discussed and set in biographical context with special reference to the composer's own personal religious 'journey' and his rediscovery of Anglican liturgical worship. Included are the important liturgical works, the two settings of the Mass and the Anglican Evening Canticles, as well as anthems, carol settings and the major choral work, The Spiritual Canticle of St John of the Cross.

Sources bibliques dans l’oeuvre vocale religieuse de Henry Purcell

The development of Henry Purcell’s sacred music in the second half of the seventeenth century originates in a fruitful compromise between the political and religious constraints of Restoration England and the contribution of the continental baroque. The stylistic evolution of his religious compositions reflects the political and religious developments which took place during the successive reigns of Charles II, James II and William of Orange. As a baroque musician and a native of an anti-papist country, Purcell showed considerable skill in the art of setting words to music and managed to blend in the reformers’emphasis on the intelligibility of the text with Counter-Reformation aesthetics.

Measuring Workforce Segregation: Religious Composition of Private-Sector Employees at Individual Sites in Northern Ireland

In this paper I examine the scope of publicly available information on the religious composition of employees in private-sector companies in Northern Ireland. I highlight the unavailability of certain types of monitoring data and the impact of data aggregation at company as opposed to site level. Both oversights lead to underestimates of the extent of workplace segregation in Northern Ireland. The ability to provide more-coherent data on workplace segregation, by religion, in Northern Ireland is crucial in terms of advancing equality and other social-justice agendas. I argue that a more-accurate monitoring of religious composition of workplaces is part of an overall need to develop a spatial approach in which the importance of ethnically territorialised spaces in the reproduction of ethnosectarian disputation is understood.

The political economy of freedom, democracy and transnational terrorism

We conduct an empirical analysis of data relating measures of economic and political freedom to the occurrence of transnational terrorism 1996–2002. We use binary logistical regression models to predict the probablities that a country will experience transnational terrorist attacks and that a given terrorist originates in a particular country. We find that the extent of political rights and civil liberties is negatively related with the generation of transnational terrorists from a country, but where the former is also negatively related with the occurrence of transnational terrorism in a country, the latter exhibits a non-linear relationship. A number of alternative explanations are disconfirmed: transnational terrorism is unrelated to inequality, economic growth, education, poverty, etc., while a society's fractionalization has mixed importance, and the religious composition has no or little association with attracting or producing transnational terrorism. A more trade-oriented economy seems consistently to associate with smaller probabilities of a country experiencing and generating transnational terrorism.

German Studies as Perpetual Difference: A Cosmopolitical Sketch

Conceptualizing predicament and ambition of an academic discipline such as German Studies through filters of globalization, my foremost concern is mediation of cultural difference through a careful consideration of local and global, here and elsewhere. That said, I am neither content with inclusion of authors as native informants of difference, nor with benevolent appraisal of speaker and/or ethnic minority instructor as sole purveyor of global cultural agenda. The reason is simple: thinking along with Kant, I am concerned not with philanthropy, but with (105). As I embrace obscurant descriptor attached to my status as a speaker and teacher of German language and literature, I remain attentive to two kinds of rights: hospitality, the of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives at someone else's territory (105) and right of resort, for all men (sic) are entitled to present themselves in society of others by virtue of their to communal possession of earth's surface (106). Indeed an astute attentiveness to this ius cosmpoliticum by native and non-native practitioners of German Studies alike can constructively address pragmatic and conceptual concerns of our discipline today. Outside of Germany, discipline's categorization under Foreign Languages and Liter atures confers upon it responsibility of being foreign, strange, fremd. Within Germany, accelerated transformation of nation's ethnic and religious composition through mass migration since early 1960s makes engagement of German Studies with foreignness and otherness within Germany inevitable. The discipline thus bears responsibility of ensuring an understanding of difference, while simultaneously offering all non-natives to affiliate and associate with plurality of historical and contem porary Germany.

Divided by faith—The impact of religious affiliation on ethnic segregation

This paper re-examines a theme that has long permeated human geography research—that of ethnic minority segregation. However, this re-examination is carried out with an awareness of the internal religious composition of ethnic populations. The paper contends that religion is an important factor that needs to be considered in any understanding of ethnic segregation. This argument is supported by an investigation of Indian and Pakistani residential segregation in the Scottish cities of Dundee and Glasgow. This investigation assesses whether Indian residents of different faiths (Hindu, Muslim and Sikh) have divergent experiences of segregation. The concept of segregation is further explored by using the P* segregation index alongside the Index of Dissimilarity (ID). This highlights the everyday realities of segregated ethnic-faith group geographies in terms of neighbourhood interaction and thus investigates the degree to which ethnic-faith groups are segregated from each other as well as from the overall population.

Spiritual Shopping: The Effects of State-Level Demographics and Religious Economies on the Locations of Psychics, Astrologers, and Christian Bookstores

In this article we utilize state-level data to investigate the factors affecting the location of Christian bookstores, astrologers, and psychics. We distinguish between factors related to general consumption of goods and factors related to religious economies to see if religious products are merely another consumption good whose popularity has no relation to the religious environment or if the consumption of these products is related to competition in the religious marketplace. Our results indicate that, whereas the location of astrologers and psychics is strongly related to general consumption related demographic factors, the location of Christian bookstores does not seem to be affected by these factors. Christian bookstores instead reflect the religious composition of state markets. Further, the presence of conservative Protestants appears to have a dampening effect on the location of psychics and astrology studios.

District-level religious composition and adoption of sterilization in India.

This paper examined the influence of religion on the adoption of female sterilization, using data from the 1992/93 Indian National Family Health Survey. The influence of religion at both individual and district levels was examined, and a multi-level modelling methodology was used for assessing community variations in the influence of religion on the adoption of sterilization. Individual religion was a strong predictor of the decision to adopt sterilization, and residence in a district in which more than 20% of the people were Muslims significantly lowered the odds of adoption of sterilization. There was more variation in the adoption of sterilization between districts for Muslim women and women from minority religious groups. The results demonstrate the influence of community conservatism on the choice of contraceptive methods and point to the mediating effects that community characteristics can have on access to sterilization services for women from religious minority sub-groups.

Changing Ethnic Composition and Potential Violent Conflict in Riau Archipelago, Indonesia: An Early Warning Signal

Compared to locals, migrants are more likely to be risk takers and have a stronger "fighting" spirit. Therefore, migrants tend to win in the competition with the local people. If the migrants win and they come from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, social jealousy may arise and conflicts can be easily provoked by outsiders. Indeed, many conflicts in Indonesia have been provoked by outsiders, utilising the relatively "balanced" ethnic and religious composition as well as socio-economic disparity among them. Riau Archipelago is one of the richest provinces in Indonesia. It has become a magnet for people within Indonesia. Because of its history, the Malay often claim to be the putra daerah (the son of the land, the "owner" or "stakeholder" of the land) of the province of Riau Archipelago. However, the rising flow of migration to the province has changed the ethnic and religious composition of the province. With only 37.44% of the total population, the Malay no longer constitute the dominant ethnic group. This paper analyses socio-economic strata of the population by ethnic and religious groups and finds out that difference by ethnicity seems to be stronger than that by religion. Furthermore, the situation of changing ethnic composition is similar to the changing ethnic and religious composition of the population in Maluku in Eastern Indonesia. Maluku used to have an equal number of Christians and Muslims, but the large flow of Muslim migrants has changed the ratio between the numbers of Muslims and Christians. Being provoked by outsiders, Maluku had suffered a prolonged "religious" conflict since 1999. This paper serves as an early warning signal to policymakers in the Riau Archipelago and cautions that the changing ethnic composition in the region may become a fertile ground for violent conflicts.

Denomination, Religious Context, and Suicide: Neo‐Durkheimian Multilevel Explanations Tested with Individual and Contextual Data

In Suicide, Durkheim found that involvement in religious communities is inversely related to suicide risk. In this article, two explanations for this relationship are examined. One is that religious networks provide support. The other is that religious communities prohibit suicide. To examine these hypotheses, individual‐level data on suicide in the Netherlands from 1936 to 1973 are used. The results show that with an increase in the proportion of religious persons in a municipality, the chances of committing suicide decrease for every denomination in that municipality, as well as among nonchurch members. Furthermore, along with the secularization of Dutch society, the impact of religious composition on suicide wanes. These results contradict the network‐support mechanism and confirm the notion that religious communities have a general protective effect against suicide.

Discrepancies in the Census Report, 2004

The paper talks about the discrepancies in the Census Report of India, 2001, published by the Census Commissioner of India. The paper tries to analyse the misrepresentation of the data on religious composition.