Religious Divisions Research Articles

American origins: Political and religious divides in US collective memory

Origin stories are particularly influential collective memories, establishing a society in the minds of its members. National collective memories are frequently conceived as being shared by all members of the country, but subnational groups may differ in their images of the group’s past. Surveying 2000 Americans, we examined political and religious differences in foundational events selected for America’s origins. While there was considerable agreement across religious and political affiliations for the most important events, there were also critical differences. While all participants demonstrated a marked positivity bias in their origin stories, conservative participants more frequently omitted foundational atrocities from America’s origin story, and thus had the most positive stories. Secular participants were most likely to begin America with the independent state, whereas religious participants frequently began America with earlier colonization events. Origin stories accord with varying images of America and American identity.

Why non-Muslims subscribe to Islamic banking?

PurposeIslamic finance has exhibited immense potential to transform the global financial landscape in the recent years. In reaction to the trend, Nigeria introduced Islamic banking system to cater to the need of the teeming population and promote financial inclusion, among other potential benefits. Unfortunately, the notable growth recorded by the banks since the inception of the Islamic banking system is slowing down because of religiously induced sentiments and criticisms championed by certain non-Muslim segments of the society. Interestingly, even with the impish hype and publicity, non-Muslims make a significant customer base of the Islamic banks. Therefore, the current paper aims to investigate the factors influencing the choice of Islamic banking among non-Muslim customers, using the theory of planned behaviour as a conceptual framework.Design/methodology/approachThis research adopts a positivist approach and relies on facts and quantitative data in an objective manner. Positivism emphasizes on using scientific methods to derive factual and quantifiable results.FindingsBased on the regression analysis, subjective norm was found to be the most significant factor influencing the choice of Islamic banking followed by perceived behavioural control and attitude. As a result, it is important for Islamic banking institutions and relevant regulatory agencies to take preemptive measures that may protect and enhance these factors in a bid to promote patronage and eventual success of Islamic banking in Nigeria, especially in the face of growing scepticism.Originality/valueThe existing literature focuses on the choices of either Muslims without due emphasis on the determinant of choice in the case of non-Muslim customers. The growing support of Islamic banking products, cutting across religious divides, compels research on the factors that influence the choice of Islamic banking among non-Muslim customers. Hence, this research seeks to bridge the gap in the existing literature by embarking on an investigation into the factors influencing the choice of Islamic banking among non-Muslim customers in the context of Nigeria.

Risky Business at Rag Fair. On Interreligious Relations in the Mean Streets of Early Victorian London

ABSTRACTIn early Victorian times there was a notorious street market for old clothes located in the heart of East London’s Jewish quarter. Each day, the most disparate ensemble of rag traders came together here, including migrants from different origins and of different religions. What kind of contact did they establish with each other? To answer this question, it is important to note that the rag trade resembled more a bazaar economy than a market economy. The Old Clothes Market, or Rag Fair as it was popularly known, was a risky environment for business. Under these circumstances, the merchants preferred to trade with parties whom they knew by reputation or from personal experience. They built client relationships which regularly cut across ethnic and religious divides. These relations, in turn, tended to transcend a merely economic rationale. In other words, the risks and uncertainties of trading at the Old Clothes Market turned out to be an incentive for forming interreligious relationships.

(Un)Veiling “Tradition”: Fashioning Multifaceted Orhni and Hijab Assemblages in Trinidad

Examining sartorial life histories—interviews detailing the entangled biographies of women and their garments—this article attends to the material microscopics of Indo-Trinidadian women’s orhni and hijab veiling practices, dress conventions that circulate as visual markers of idealized femininities vested in mobilizations of Indian, Hindu, and/or Islamic tradition. Complicating facile projections of bounded and timeless essences, women’s narratives highlight the dynamic, hybrid ways in which they have historically “assembled” their outfits, weaving together the diverse material, aesthetic, and ideological threads available to them in a multi-ethnic, multi-faith, and globalized Trinidad. While representations of veiling have facilitated the cordoning-off of ethnic and religious divides, attending to the multifaceted materialities and aesthetics of orhni and hijab assemblages can rip away at the seams that reinforce fictive notions of bounded “culture” and static “tradition” in the Caribbean.

Early History of Micro and Meso Dialogue between Muslims and Non-Muslims in Australia

Interfaith dialogue has been touted as a means to solve many of the religious divisions that have arisen in an increasingly global and multi-faith society. In Australia, now a multi-cultural and multi faith society, a range of organisations exist to facilitate this dialogue, most coming in to existence after the 1960’s This paper will review the early dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims as portrayed in the public record. It covers pre and post-Colonial Australia, up until the 1950’s. As inter-faith dialogue becomes more important in an increasingly global society, it will examine the effect that micro and meso level dialogue has influenced social harmony at some levels. By examining the public record and the narratives surrounding the Macassans, Afghans and other early Muslims, this paper will firstly argue that micro and meso dialogue prior to the 1950s’ between Muslims immigrants and non-Muslims made a contribution to the social harmony in Australia. Secondly, despite many attempts by Muslims, meso level dialogue was often ineffective and sometimes failed for a variety of reasons. Additionally, it will point to the need for further research in order to paint a complete picture of the levels of dialogue between Muslims and others throughout Australian history.

Die bayerische Landtagswahl vom 14. Oktober 2018: Signal für nachhaltigen Wandel auch im Bund?

The outcome of the election marks a deep shift not only in Bavarian politics but also corresponds to Germany’s ongoing restructuring of its electorate and the changing configuration of its party system at large: (1) The two catch-all parties suffered dramatic losses of more than ten percentage points; the conservative CSU lost its parliamentary majority in the state legislature, tallying less than 40 percent, the social-democratic SPD even less than ten percent of the total vote . (2) The voting behaviour is characterised by high volatility and processes of polarisation, caused by growing cleavages between town and country, between the generational as well as religious divides and the ongoing occupational differentiation in the electorate . Ideologically, these divides correlate with liberal and cosmopolitan mind-sets and (post-)modern urban lifestyles, the main electoral base of the Green party, on the one hand versus the more conservative and traditional rural electorates on the other . Their influence on the newly formed coalition between the CSU and the “Free Voters” will be more pronounced, while the populist and in part anti-pluralist electorate rallies behind the right-wing AfD . (3) In Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse, the Green party has now replaced the SPD as the main electoral contender of the Christian-democratic parties; it remains to be seen whether their electoral fortunes can be extended to the northern and eastern parts of the country in the near future .

Meritocracy and Community in Twenty-First-Century Poland

Poland has never been as homogenous as its ethnolinguistic composition would lead one to believe. In fact, it is every bit as diverse as countries with sharp linguistic, racial, or religious divides. The only difference is that the conflicts and tensions expressed elsewhere between ascriptive communities are experienced in Poland within a shared label of identity. Just because two Poles speak the same language, get baptized in the same church, and identify as Polish does not mean that they define Poland in the same way. In reality, there are at least two Polands today, and the conflict between them has intensified in recent years. This cultural divide is more complicated and crosscutting than any handy categories of rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, Catholic and secular. There are tendencies that link these various categories, but there is a deeper clash that cuts right through them. At the root of this division is a chasm of incomprehension involving the fundamental and rival concepts of merit and community.

Not Above the Fray: Religious and Political Divides' Impact on U.S. Missionary Sisters in 1980s Nicaragua

Not Above the Fray: Religious and Political Divides' Impact on U.S. Missionary Sisters in 1980s Nicaragua

Denominations as (Theological) Institutions: An Afterword

Denominations as (Theological) Institutions: An Afterword Joseph Webster When is a church a church? What makes a church a denomination? What makes a denomination an institution? And what constitutes that institution: people, the law, money, divine approval, or something else? In asking questions such as these, Handman, Opas, Hardin, and MacLochlainn usefully address denominational forms as institutions, which has long been a sociological concern—most especially in the work of Goffman (1961)—but has arguably received comparatively little attention within the anthropology of Christianity. Taken together, then, the articles in this collection address not just questions about form and function, but also questions about how the self becomes built into structures that regard rules and norms as an important, even sacred expression of Christian life and truth. The collective specificity of the ethnographic cases that we have been presented with is hard to miss: Lutheranism in New Guinea, Pentecostalism in Samoa, Methodism in the Philippines, and Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism in Amazonia. Importantly, when Catholicism does make an empirical appearance, it is very often described in the context of its largely negative interpretation by non-Catholic (and often anti-Catholic) Christians. As such, it seems fair to begin by asking whether or not these articles address the Anthropology of Christianity, or actually the Anthropology of Protestantism? More than this, are we really talking [End Page 1123] about a specific kind of Protestantism, namely experientially intense Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism? To be clear, this observation need not be read as a critique, at least not as previously formulated by Hann (2007) in relation to what he calls “The Anthropology of Christianity per se.” Instead, the striking denominational (or perhaps, typological) similarity I find in these articles’ ethnographic cases may be read as a strength rather than a weakness. This seems true insofar as the kind of ethnographic comparison I attempt below is able to proceed on a surer footing, given that some (but certainly not all) of the emic theological assumptions at play appear to be held in common. The tense relationship between Protestant ecclesiology and soteriology, for example, emerges as a trend across all four articles. If anything is to be gained analytically by echoing the concerns of our informants (and I think there is) then we might venture to pose a theological question such as: is religious division the product of the sins of pride, greed, and idolatry, or are such divisions the result of a godly insistence on the singularity of biblical truth? Rephrased anthropologically, we might ask: what are the institutional forms of Protestantism, and what differences do these forms make? To this end, Courtney Handman’s article examines the colonial and more recent history of Christian mission in PNG, whereby denominational competition is both an empirical reality and an embarrassing and self-contradictory theological problem. Examining the strikingly self-aware commentaries of Lutheran missionary John Kuder, Handman shrewdly points out how denominational difference both matters a great deal and is seen as a product of unspiritual division—a division that is seen to undermine the universal claims of the gospel of salvation. Here, we are confronted with the Lutheran problematic of deciding whether the gospel of salvation is to be framed within denominational specificities or within a pan-Christian attachment to the person and work of Christ. While Kuder would surely want to claim the latter, it seems that the former keeps asserting itself in a context where disagreements with other groups calling themselves Christians forces these missionaries to make sense of who they are and what their message is, but always in relation to what they are not and what their mission is not. Crucial to this is Handman’s equally important observation that all this has a deeply paternalistic tone, namely that the children (that is, the natives) shouldn’t see the parents (that is, the denominationally divided missionaries) fighting. More than this, such a paternalistic desire [End Page 1124] for public unity is further colored by assertions of authority and higher truth claims, whereby “Father definitely knows best.” But why this shame about denominationalism? My sense is that this emerges from something within the Protestant tradition in the way that truth is imagined to...

INTERNALIZATION MANAGEMENT OF RELIGION VALUES THROUGH ISLAMIC EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHARACTERS OF STUDENTS OF SMAN 1 MALANG

<p>This study aims to investigate the planning, implementation, and evaluation of religious value internalization through an Extracurricular program of Islamic religious division and its relevance to a character building at SMAN 1 Malang. The data collections of this study were observation, interview, and documentation. In analyzing the data, the researcher used qualitative descriptive analysis which means that she described and interpreted the data to figure out the phenomenon in a real condition. The result of this study showed that the member of students in Islamic religious division planned and implemented the programs and activities based on the religious value through materials, methods, and times they arranged. Besides, the internalization management of religious value through this extracurricular program has relevance to a character building. This extracurricular program also facilitates the students to implement their knowledge into a good character based on religious value. In other words, the students can apply their experience they have got in the classroom into the activities in the extracurricular program, to have a good character, in which it also becomes the purpose and the relevance of internalization management of religious value through an extracurricular program and character building.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Management of Internalization of Religious Values; Extracurricular Section of Islamic Spirituality; Character Education<em></em></p><p> </p>

The word of a reluctant convert

Recent political events suggest that there is more political, religious, and moral division than many had previously realized. Since people on all sides think they’re in the right, mitigating division is in everyone’s interest. But overcoming division requires changing minds, and changing minds requires advocacy. These considerations raise important questions in the epistemology of advocacy. In particular, who are the best advocates? After making some general remarks about the epistemology of advocacy, I explore the thought, found in Berkeley’s dialogue Alciphron, that an important variable to consider when assessing advocates is whether they are converts. I argue that this is indeed an important variable to consider, as certain kinds of converts can avoid some attempts to dismiss advocates. However, non-converts score better than converts in other respects. I conclude by suggesting that empirical work must be done to assess the role conversion plays in assessing advocates.

‘Culture Is Inseparable from Race’: Culture Wars from Pat Buchanan to Milo Yiannopoulos

‘Culture Is Inseparable from Race’: Culture Wars from Pat Buchanan to Milo Yiannopoulos

:Responses to Religious Division, c. 1580–1620: Public and Private, Divine and Temporal

:<i>Responses to Religious Division, c. 1580–1620: Public and Private, Divine and Temporal</i>

Reactions of the American Jews to Trump’s Jerusalem Embassy Move: Continuation of the Historical Pattern?

Pro-Israeli politicians in Washington have long supported the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, contrary to the widespread belief, not all American Jews offer unconditional support to U.S. decisions taken in order to promote Israel’s national interests. In this article, interviews were conducted with representatives from various Jewish diaspora groups in United States shortly before and after the official declaration of the U.S. Embassy move in December 2017. This article documents that opinions of American Jews diverge significantly regarding Trump’s Jerusalem Embassy decision. This article argues that this divergence stems from Israel’s actions and policies toward the Palestinians since the late 1970s and political and religious divisions within the American Jewish community.

Milton’s Italy: Anglo-Italian Literature, Travel, and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England. Catherine Gimelli Martin. New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. xv+318.

<i>Milton’s Italy: Anglo-Italian Literature, Travel, and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England</i>. Catherine Gimelli Martin. New York: Routledge, 2017. Pp. xv+318.

The Boundaries of Trust: Cross-Religious and Cross-Ethnic Field Experiments in Mauritius.

Several prominent evolutionary theories contend that religion was critical to the emergence of large-scale societies and encourages cooperation in contemporary complex groups. These theories argue that religious systems provide a reliable mechanism for finding trustworthy anonymous individuals under conditions of risk. In support, studies find that people displaying cues of religious identity are more likely to be trusted by anonymous coreligionists. However, recent research has found that displays of religious commitment can increase trust across religious divides. These findings are puzzling from the perspective that religion emerges to regulate coalitions. To date, these issues have not been investigated outside of American undergraduate samples nor have studies considered how religious identities interact with other essential group-membership signals, such as ancestry, to affect intergroup trust. Here, we address these issues and compare religious identity, ancestry, and trust among and between Christians and Hindus living in Mauritius. Ninety-seven participants rated the trustworthiness of faces, and in a modified trust game distributed money among these faces, which varied according to religious and ethnic identity. In contrast to previous research, we find that markers of religious identity increase monetary investments only among in-group members and not across religious divides. Moreover, out-group religious markers on faces of in-group ancestry decrease reported trustworthiness. These findings run counter to recent studies collected in the United States and suggest that local socioecologies influence the relationships between religion and trust. We conclude with suggestions for future research and a discussion of the challenges of conducting field experiments with remote populations.

How Protestant was the Elizabethan Regime?

Abstract Recent historiography on the Elizabethan regime has argued that it was strongly dominated by convinced Protestants, most prominently Lord Burghley, the earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham. This article argues that this consensus glosses over many important political figures whose religion was much more conservative, who were often sympathetic to Catholics and in several cases were probably essentially Catholic themselves. These individuals, although prominent at the time, have been seriously neglected by historians, often because of the nature of the archival record. The article surveys the prominence of such men throughout the reign, examining their religious inclinations. It goes on to assess the extent of their influence on the politics of the period, arguing that they were capable of mounting major political initiatives, and indeed scored several important successes against more strongly Protestant policies. Likewise, it argues that very often forward Protestant policies met with failure, in which the conservatives’ influence can often be detected. Finally, it discusses some of the consequences of these findings, proposing a more complex picture of Elizabethan politics, in which religious division and indeed conflict was a significant factor, and arguing that the Elizabethan regime should therefore be seen as a much less united and univocal entity than is often assumed.

Pity Silenced

While the mercantile value of mercy in The Merchant of Venice has been often highlighted, the diminished role of pity has received scant attention. This article argues that the ways in which mercy is shown to subsume and eventually incorporate pity throw light on the play’s negotiation of contentious religious and political approaches to the spectres of poverty and/or impoverishment that threaten the emerging mercantile economy. A re-reading of relevant scenes retraces the Catholic implications of the safety-net potential of pity which, unlike the Protestant worldly pity of The Sonnets, here seems bound for repression. In Portia’s final donation to the merchants of Venice even the lingering allusions to Catholicism are neutralized and put to the service of vested interests: a conflation of Christian and Jewish usury that cuts across all religious divides; such allusions are possibly reminiscent of the Monti di Pietà (Mounts of Piety) existent in Italy since 1462 to counter Jewish usury.

Pirzad’s Diasporic Transnational Subjects in “A Day Before Easter”

Abstract In “A Day Before Easter,” Zoya Pirzad highlights the fact that despite the forced dislocation and the necessarily hybrid existence of Armenians in Iran, Armenians have by and large adopted a monolithic notion of who they are. Bringing the characters’ diasporic consciousness to light, this article argues that Iranian Armenian identity reflects the cultural clashes that are an inevitable consequence of such an interweaving of cultures and histories across religious and ethnic divides. However, the lived reality for Iranian Armenians has changed over time. Taking into account the Armenians’ forced relocation and their citizenship in Iran, this article considers Pirzad’s new generation as diasporic transnational subjects.

Peace journalism on a shoestring? Conflict reporting in Nigeria’s national news media

Conflicts that occur across ethnic and/or religious identity lines generally have underlying root causes such as economic marginalization and political competition. Yet when these causes are ignored by politicians and the media, and conversely differences in ethnicity and religion are simply propagated as the main conflict causes, this may have serious consequences for people’s perceptions concerning the possibility and feasibility of peaceful conflict resolution and coexistence. In this paper, we investigate to what extent Nigerian newspapers practice peace journalism by emphasizing underlying causes of conflict in their reporting rather than stressing ethnic and religious divisions. We make use of a sequential mixed methods approach, which combines a quantitative content analysis of news reports with semi-structured interviews with Nigerian newspaper editors and journalists. Our results indicate that Nigerian newspapers do not explicitly use divisive language when discussing conflicts, but they rarely stress underlying structural causes either. While there is a willingness among Nigerian journalists to avoid potentially escalatory language, a dearth of resources and capacities impedes independent and in-depth analysis concerning the underlying drivers of conflicts.