Religious Socialization Research Articles

Doubt and Desire

Doubt and Desire

Why Younger Catholics Seem More Committed: Survivorship Bias and/or “Creative Minority” Effects among British Catholics

AbstractThe normative value of, and the extent of popular engagement with, different forms of commitment differ across Christian religious traditions, but studies often show women and older people exhibiting greater religiosity in their behavior and belief. Using a multidimensional approach to religious commitment, this study uses a new survey to provide an in‐depth assessment of Catholics in Britain. It finds that younger cohorts show greater involvement in some aspects of commitment and that there is very limited evidence for gender differences. Family religious socialization plays a key role in patterns of commitment relative to the weak impact of schooling. Two potential explanations for this counterintuitively positive “youth effect” seen among British Catholics are offered: “survivor bias” and a “creative minority” effect. The study provides an important contribution to understanding how Catholics in Britain engage with their faith and mediate processes of secularization.

Social Inequality in Religious Education: Examining the Impact of Sex, Socioeconomic Status, and Religious Socialization on Unequal Learning Opportunities

The study of social inequality has so far received little attention in religious education research, although this phenomenon has been studied in educational science and sociology of education research for fifty years. This article therefore aims to clarify the explanatory power of this research approach for research in religious education. Based on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural and social reproduction, a structural equation model is used to examine the extent to which students’ sex, socioeconomic status, and religious socialization determine unequal learning opportunities in religious education. The data basis of the study is a sample of 952 students from Germany who were interviewed by means of questionnaires. The results show that religious socialization and the students’ sex are relevant to unequal learning conditions, whereas the socioeconomic status of the family has a marginal influence. Unequal learning conditions are created in the classroom by differences in the perception of the relevance of the subject matter, and in the understanding of learning processes. Religious students are in both cases at an advantage compared to non-religious students.

Life Course and Emerging Adulthood: Protestant Women’s Views on Intimate Partner Violence and Divorce

There are inconsistent findings on the relationship between intimate partner violence (IPV) and religiosity or Biblical inerrancy. The Biblical text accepts divorce in cases of infidelity and desertion—but does not specify abuse or IPV as legitimate reasons. In this study, I interviewed twenty White Protestant women (ages 18–22) at a large southern university. In emerging adulthood, a critical period for young adults (ages 18–29), I examined their current levels of religious participation, beliefs in Biblical inerrancy, and their perceptions of IPV as a legitimate reason for divorce. During this process of identity formation as emerging adults, they may reevaluate their religious socialization and parents’ values as well as engage in various social relationships, including romantic ones. Emerging adult women are also at the highest risk for IPV. The findings suggest Protestant women in emerging adulthood reevaluated their religious socialization to formulate a more adaptive worldview. Their religious participation and belief in Biblical inerrancy declined during emerging adulthood and they all accepted divorce as acceptable in cases of IPV. It is an important finding because they are in a key period of potential IPV exposure in their life course.

Egypt’s Salafi Awakening in the 1970s: Revisiting the History of a Crucial Decade for Egyptian Islamic Activism

This article aims at revisiting the history of Egyptian Islamic activism during the important decade of the 1970s, by reintroducing a crucial element that is absent from the existing academic literature: the role played by Salafi ideas in the religious socialization of 1970s Egyptian Islamic activists. Far from only being the product of Saudi Arabia’s intense petrodollar-funded proselytization efforts, these Salafi ideas had already gained a foothold in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century, when they started being promoted by organizations such as Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya, which saw itself as a rival to the Muslim Brotherhood. Reintroducing this element helps complexify a historiographical narrative of the 1970s that has been mostly centered around the Muslim Brotherhood and the posthumous role played by the ideas of radical thinker Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), and it is key to a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the subsequent evolutions of Egyptian Islamic activism.

С. Л. Франк: диалектика соборности

The concept of sobornost in the philosophy of S.L. Frank is considered on the basis of a dialectical approach. Sobornost is revealed in the “dialectic of inseparable-unmerged” bi-unity, the divine-humanity of a man in social reality from abstract forms to its concrete expression, each stage reached qualitatively or categorically changes our being, making up for our potentiality with partial relevance. In its ontological meaning, sobornost is integral, united, and its separation is associated with the personality, through whose activity various forms of sobornost are actualized. In the religious sociality distinguished by the authors, there is an existential form of sobornost, and in secular sociality, the essential form of sobornost is traced, in religious-secular sociality we can speak of the conceptual form of sobornost. An isolated individual, according to Frank, is an abstraction; a person is truly real only in “conciliar being”. Each level of disclosure of sobornost corresponds to a type of personality and activity. The formation of personality occurs not under the influence of personal subjective needs, but in the demand for the trans-subjective reality of God. A man is related to this reality in his “spontaneity” or freedom. The community has its origin in the sobornost, and the social ideal, which has religious grounds, must be fundamentally realizable, that is, we not only need to know moral principles, we must implement them, moving away from the meaning of the moral ideal as an abstract concept and moving on to the will of a man, the activity of a personality, which actualizes it.

Heterogeneity in Religious Commitment and Its Predictors

Nowadays, people show various forms of religious commitment. To better understand this heterogeneity, it is necessary to analyze the factors that predict that commitment. For this purpose, the paper raises the question of whether and how such commitment is predicted by (a) the character of the religious institution to which the individual belongs; (b) individual characteristics, such as intelligence and attitude toward religion; and (c) social environment, such as one’s religious upbringing in the family home. According to logistic regression analysis, it is predominantly religious belonging and religious socialization in the family home that predict religious commitment. Religious socialization is by far the most effective predictor when the difference between marginal and slight religious commitment is regarded. The predictive power of religious belonging depends on the particular religious tradition, as being Muslim has a bigger effect on religious commitment than being Protestant or Catholic. Individual characteristics, however, have no impact on how an individual engages with religion.

Collisions of difference: Teaching gender and sexuality in a conservative and religious culture

Gender and sexuality have been at the forefront of societal debate in recent years with various legal battles concerning LGBT rights and religious liberties taking center stage. Shifts in attitudes and gains in legal protections have served to entrench conservative religious beliefs and to perpetuate generational “bitter” knowledge. This study seeks to understand the types of beliefs brought into the classroom by students and to examine the role of religious socialization in shaping and maintaining problematic beliefs in the context of learning new discordant knowledge. The data demonstrate that students bring “bitter” or problematic knowledge into the classroom, which serves as an obstacle to engaging in critical inquiry. We explore how the educational technique of engaging in pedagogies of discomfort invites students to see things differently and to examine how the religious institution has shaped their beliefs and values. We conclude with the call for educators to create authenticity and safety through sharing in self-examination and presenting their own vulnerability within the course.

Religious Socialization and Self-Definition Among Black Undergraduate Women Attending Predominantly White Institutions

To date, few scholars have explored religious and spiritual socialization among emerging adult Black women. In this study, we analyzed semi-structured interview data from 50 Black undergraduate women to explore associations between childhood religious socialization messages and current religious beliefs in emerging adulthood. Consensual qualitative methods revealed two broad domains and six themes. The first domain, “religious alignment,” included: (1) internalizing religion and (2) educating others on religious beliefs. The second domain, “religious departure,” included: (3) modifying religious expectations to fit developing beliefs, (4) employing religion as a pathway to self-acceptance, (5) picking and choosing battles within their religious community, and (6) choosing an alternate religious or faith system. Findings highlighted how the women started to take ownership of their religious experiences, as well as how they used religious practices, such as prayer, to cope with gendered racism. Authors discuss the implications of emerging adulthood on Black women’s religious identities.

MIGRATION AND RELIGIOUS SOCIALIZATION IN NIGERIA: THE FULANIZATION DILEMMA

Migration has remarkably influenced the development of civilization and the establishment of cultural borders throughout history. In the case of Nigeria, one of the negative impacts of migration has been the violent seizure of ancestral lands by the Fulani as part of a strategy to 'fulanize' and 'Islamize' the Nigerian nation. This study investigates the links between human migration and religious socialization in Africa, particularly Nigeria. The paper employs the descriptive and phenomenological approaches and bases its arguments on the theoretical foundations of Durkheimian and Weberian theories. The paper argues that regional mobility, with its religious socializing effects, affects national politics, government, the economy, and other national domains. It concludes that African countries should include international migration in their plans and national development goals to make their countries safer.

Youth’s religious identity, religiosity, and religious socialization in contemporary Lithuania: actors and their interactions

Straipsnyje analizuojama jaunimo religinio tapatumo, religingumo konstravimo problema bei jo sąveika su religine socializacija Lietuvoje. Remiantis 2019–2020 metais atliktų fokus grupių interviu su Lietuvos baigiamųjų klasių (11–12) moksleiviais duomenimis, straipsnyje analizuojamas jaunimo religingumo ir religinio tapatumo konstravimas bei jo santykis su religine socializacija Lietuvoje. Pirmiausia aptariamas jaunimo religinio tapatumo klausimas ir jo konstravimas šiuolaikinėje visuomenėje, nagrinėjamas pirminės ir antrinės (institucionalizuotos) socializacijos įtakos konstruojant religinį tapatumą ir švietimo, kaip socialinio instituto, vaidmuo religinei socializacijai. Pasitelkiant tyrimo informantų naratyvus straipsnyje aptariamas moksleivių ir mokytojų požiūris į jaunimo religinį tapatumą ir jo konstravimo veiksnius. Empirinio tyrimo duomenys atskleidė ypatingą mokytojo vaidmens vietą religinio tapatumo, religingumo konstravimo procesuose. Tyrimo duomenys taip pat parodė, kad tarp jo dalyvių vyrauja pasirenkamasis, o ne paveldimasis, religinio tapatumo bei religingumo konstravimo procesas.

The foundational influence of early spiritual experiences on adulthood

This article presents research on spiritual experience in childhood and aims to illustrate the foundational effects of such experience on adult lives, using the qualitative data of several testimonies. The latter highlight that researchers in spirituality need to pay more attention to what is happening at a spiritual level in childhood and to the hermeneutical lens it provides for interpreting the lives of adults, including themselves, who once were children. They will also illustrate the role religious socialisation plays in spiritual experiences in childhood. The stories are explained in terms of the spirituality framework of the foundational desire for authenticity in the subjectivity of the child interacting with the child’s lived historical situation and how this interaction continues to play out in the life of the adult. They are evidence of the self-implicating character of research in spirituality as the researcher was also once This article presents research on spiritual experience in childhood and aims to illustrate the foundational effects of such experience on adult lives, using the qualitative data of several testimonies. The latter highlight that researchers in spirituality need to pay more attention to what is happening at a spiritual level in childhood and to the hermeneutical lens it provides for interpreting the livesof adults, including themselves, who once were children. They will also illustrate the role religious socialisation plays in spiritual experiences in childhood. The stories are explained in terms of the spirituality framework of the foundational desire for authenticity in the subjectivity of the child interacting with the child’s lived historical situation and how this interaction continues to play out in the life of theadult. They are evidence of the self-implicating character of research in spirituality as the researcher was also once a child. The researcher regards authentic subjectivity as a form of mystagogical method, a method about which Kees Waaijman has written eloquently.&nbsp

CЕМЬЯ В ДИСКУРСЕ МОЛОДЕЖИ МОСКОВСКОЙ ЦЕРКВИ ХРИСТА

The article deals with the perceptions of the family of young followers of The Moscow Church of Christ. It examines the process of religious socialization, the relationship between parents and young followers of a religious association, and ideas of the ideal family and divorce. The study finds that children from single-parent families are more likely to become members of a religious association, while children who grew up in a religious association are less interested in starting a future family. Ideal family relationships are based on the “biblical” model, which affirms the primary role of the father as the head of the family. The importance of the institution of “family” mentoring as a factor in strengthening family relationships was noted. The interchangeability of the kinship and spiritual understanding of “family” in the rhetoric of the respondents was revealed. The research is based on field material collected in 2018–2019 in Moscow.

INTERNALIZATION OF PUBLIC RELATION AND ISLAMIC EDUCATION VALUES IN THE SOCIAL RELIGIOUS TRADITION IN THE “TREUN U GAMPONG” PROGRAM FOR THE ACEH COMMUNITY

This Community Development title is consolidation of religious social programs in the people of gampong lamteh dayah kecamatan suka makmur aceh besar. The Religious Social Program has been running very well in Lamteh Dayah village. The Community Service Team only focuses on strengthening the programs so that they are sustainable in the Community. Some small obstacles were found in the realization of the program, especially regarding social psychology and political economy which were not yet well established. Regarding these problems, the Dedication team used the Participatory Action method to solve the problem. The team together with the community moves and plays a role to solve the problem. The result of this community service activity was the realization of a sustainable religious social program in Lamteh Dayah village.

Factors influencing the process of religious conversion and related typology of religious conversion

The article examines one of the phenomena of personality transformation called religious conversion. Increasing scientific interest to the phenomenon of religiosity, in particular to religious conversion, has been observed in the last decade in Kazakhstan. The current religious situation in our country, namely, the growth of new religious movements, an increase in the number of adherents of traditional religions, including Islam, makes it makes it necessary to comprehend the rapid transformation processes of religiosity, and as a result, the transformation of social identity. This article describes the main types of the changes in the semantic sphere, namely ascetic, crisis and positive types. Their key characteristics are presented. As a result of religious conversion, transformation of social identity occurs. Due to this the convert focusing on Islamic moral values ​​in everyday life rebuilds identifications in the self-image according to the religious beliefs and ideas of the Muslim about himself or herself and the reality around. Thus, religious conversion is a long-term, multi-level process of conscious transformation of personality due to the emergence internal craving for the search for truth within the religious vision of the world, which leads to the transformation of social identity through a change in the hierarchy of its elements. The new converts who took part in this study correspond to the dominance of religious identity over its other elements. Keywords: transformation, religious conversion, semantic sphere of personality, religiosity, religious socialization.

Individual, Familial and Social Environment Factors associated with Religiosity among Urban High School Students

Background Adolescence is a time when beliefs and values are developed and when the influences of the significant others take shape in the life of the future young adult and manifest themselves in affecting the level of religiosity. Apart from other factors, the relationship between adolescents and parents is essential for understanding the development of religiosity. Although numerous studies show an association between the religiosity of parents and adolescents’ beliefs and practices, there is a need for a deeper understanding of the mechanism of religious socialization within the family. Purpose This study seeks to explain how adolescents’ religious beliefs and participation relates to the religiosity of significant others, relationship with their parents and other individual factors such as gender and parents’ education and occupation. Methods As part of the Youth in Europe programe, a questionnaire-based study was conducted in 108 randomly selected classes from 84 high-schools in Bucharest, Romania. Data from 2604 respondents was used to identify the factors associated with religiosity at the individual, familial and social environment level of high school students. Results The main findings reveal that adolescents with better relationships with their parents are more religious in terms of religious beliefs and religious participation than those with lesser relationships. Girls show a higher level of individual religiosity than boys, but boys attend more often religious services. Furthermore, adolescents coming from families with lower socioeconomic status have higher scores on religious beliefs, but they score lower on religious participation. Conclusions and Implications Adolescents’ religiosity relates to/associates with many variables, being a dynamic process. Its understanding resides in studying the complexity of relationships that shape the development of religious belief and behavior.

Crystallization of Santri's Religious Attitudes through the Pesantren Cultural Process

Each pesantren culture has a unique variation in shaping the religious attitudes of students, this problem was initially caused by the weakness of the pesantren culture which caused the moral decadence of students, so that the process of pesantren culture had to be strengthened. This type of research uses qualitative field research with descriptive methods and data collection techniques using interviews, documentation, and observation. The results of this study explain the cultural process of the modern Al-Aqsho Islamic boarding school, Sumedang Regency, consisting of religious socialization, modernity, moderation, adaptation emphasizing modern life systems, habituation which is applied more to the habituation of the grantor system and enculturation showing modern pesantren culture. Meanwhile, the cultural process of Al-Ittifaq Islamic Boarding School in Bandung Regency consists of religious socialization, entrepreneurship, and society, adaptation emphasizing the adaptation of religious experiences, adaptation highlighting the social life system of the community, adaptation to the entrepreneurial work environment, habituation applied to the religious system, community and entrepreneurship and enculturation shown religious agribusiness pesantren culture.

Crystallization of Santri's Religious Attitudes through the Pesantren Cultural Process

Each pesantren culture has a unique variation in shaping the religious attitudes of students, this problem was initially caused by the weakness of the pesantren culture which caused the moral decadence of students, so that the process of pesantren culture had to be strengthened. This type of research uses qualitative field research with descriptive methods and data collection techniques using interviews, documentation, and observation. The results of this study explain the cultural process of the modern Al-Aqsho Islamic boarding school, Sumedang Regency, consisting of religious socialization, modernity, moderation, adaptation emphasizing modern life systems, habituation which is applied more to the habituation of the grantor system and enculturation showing modern pesantren culture. Meanwhile, the cultural process of Al-Ittifaq Islamic Boarding School in Bandung Regency consists of religious socialization, entrepreneurship, and society, adaptation emphasizing the adaptation of religious experiences, adaptation highlighting the social life system of the community, adaptation to the entrepreneurial work environment, habituation applied to the religious system, community and entrepreneurship and enculturation shown religious agribusiness pesantren culture.

Риски религиозной социализации в цифровом обществе: стратегии исследования и методы профилактики

The paper considers the following issues: the risks of religious socialization in a digital society and measures to prevent them. The article describes risk assessment methods, such as the analysis of thematic network communities, phenomenological analysis of religious content perception in network communities. The authors analyze the approaches to studying risks, propose recommendations to mitigate risk factors, and herein lies scientific originality of the research. The results allow concluding that religious socialization in a digital world involves many risks prevention of which is a key problem of humanitaristics. The research findings are as follows: the authors propose risk mitigation methods, outline prospects for further studies in this area.

Риски религиозной социализации в условиях постсекулярного общества

The article presents the search for effective steps to minimize interfaith tension. The authors reveal the essence of traditional introduction to religion in the modern information environment. Digital technologies, on the one hand, expand the horizons of the possible, but on the other hand, the personality breaks away from natural communication, and as a result, the internal system of spiritual landmarks is disturbed. And then the human sensible world easily switches to another type of communication due to his or her natural need for sympathy and care – to virtual communication. The current situation related to the digital technologies is exacerbated by the consequences of the cultural disruption of the past century and by the hyperactivity of aggressive liberal missionary work. Russian society is forced not only to take into account, but also to resist sectarian attacks on the images of national cultures. The system of values of Russian culture traditionally represents the space for the struggle between good and evil in the name of achieving the spiritual ideal. An elusive ideal in a transitive postsecular society poses significant risks of harmonization of cultural and religious traditions. That is why the main focus of the article is on the stabilization of social life through the development of the principles of the optimal model of religious socialization.