Religion and Society

This book examines the religious beliefs, commitments, affiliation, and practices (church attendance, prayer, Bible reading, and personal morality) of eleven presidents, discusses the influences upon and nature of their faith, and assesses how it contributed to their understanding of political ideology and practice. It also analyzes how these presidents’ religious views and values helped shape the way they formulated and promoted specific policies. In addition, the book examines how presidents dealt with religious constituencies, interest groups, and leaders, evaluated religious issues (such as religious liberty, the relationship between church and the state, government support for religion, the proper place of religion in public life, and the connection between religion and public morality and civic duty), and appraised key public policy matters (such as the proper tasks of government, civil rights, education, and war and peace). The book explores social and cultural factors that influenced these presidents, but it focuses primarily on the intellectual and moral presuppositions that helped guide their understanding of political and religious issues and their actions while in office. Special attention is paid to five themes: the separation of church and state, civil religion, America as a chosen nation, the nature of their convictions, and the issue of character. Does the concept of the separation of church and state require presidents to confine their religious values to their private lives and operate from a secular perspective in fulfilling their office? Is it proper for a president’s religious convictions to direct him in performing his duties, devising a philosophy of government, and implementing his policies? How have presidents served as both the nation’s pastor and prophet, called on at times to comfort and assure Americans and at others to challenge and inspire them? To what extent has the pervasive belief that America is divinely chosen to spread democracy, individual liberty, and justice to the world influenced presidents’ actions? How have their worldviews — blueprints for understanding, explaining, and managing reality — influenced presidents’ thoughts and actions? What factors, including religious training, biblical study, and spiritual nurture, have shaped the character of these presidents?

Religious diversity in the United States has increased dramatically in recent decades. How are Christians relating to their Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and other new religious neighbors? Using local examples, this book covers the gamut of Christian perspectives in a multireligious America, including debate over a new Hindu temple in town, an Episcopal church that has hosted a mosque since 1987, cooperative efforts between African American pastors and Muslim leaders, immigrant Christians seeking to save non-Christian fellow immigrants, evangelicals resettling immigrants and refugees through “friendship evangelism,” Catholics learning about other religions in the spirit of Vatican II, and Greek Orthodox Christians and Turkish Muslims gaining a new appreciation of their shared history. The effects of September 11, 2001, are also discussed from increased dialogue to missionary initiatives. Here Christian theology meets the multireligious real world, with multiple results suggestive of national trends.

More and more Americans are opting out of religion. Who are these people that reject religion, and what motivates them? What actually causes a person to lose his or her faith? This book offers an in-depth exploration of the reasons, experiences, and values of people who were once religious but are no longer. By analyzing their personal stories of how they transitioned from religiosity to secularity, key patterns are explored and many insights provided. Rather than living up to the cliché of the angry, nihilistic atheist, apostates are life-affirming, courageous, highly intelligent and inquisitive, and deeply moral. It is predicted that this trend toward nonbelief will likely continue and the sooner we recognize that religion is frequently and freely rejected by all sorts of men and women, the sooner our understanding of the human condition will improve. The first book of its kind, Faith No More will appeal to anyone interested in the ‘‘New Atheism” and indeed to anyone wishing to more fully understand our changing relationship to religious faith.

Drawing on the massive National Study of Youth and Religion’s telephone surveys and more than 120 in-depth interviews, the authors chart the spiritual trajectory of American adolescents and young adults over a period of three years. Turning conventional wisdom on its head, the authors find that religion is an important force in the lives of most—though their involvement with religion changes over time, just as teenagers themselves do. Pearce and Denton weave in fascinating portraits of youth to give depth to mere numerical rankings of religiosity, which tend to prevail in large studies. One teenager might rarely attend a service, yet count herself profoundly religious; another might be deeply involved in a church’s social world, yet claim to be “not, like, deep into the faith.” They provide a new set of qualitative categories—Abiders, Assenters, Adapters, Avoiders, and Atheists—quoting from interviews to illuminate the shading between them. And, with their longitudinal survey, they offer a rich understanding of the dynamic nature of faith in young people’s lives during a period of rapid change in biology, personality, and social interaction. Not only do degrees of religiosity change, but so does its nature, whether expressed in institutional practices or personal belief. By presenting a new model of religious development and change, illustrated with compelling personal accounts of real teenagers, Pearce and Denton offer parents and religious leaders a new guide for understanding religious development in youth.

There is often more than meets the eye where politics and religion are concerned. Faith‐based initiatives are no exception. Using data from multiple sources, this book examines how and why states have been creating these policies and practices, revealing three key aspects of faith‐based policy implementation by states: appointment of state actors known as faith‐based liaisons, passage of legislation, and development of state faith‐based policy conferences. Despite the good intentions of some, faith‐based policies did not create significant new programs to help those in need. Instead these initiatives were powerful political symbols used to reshape church‐state relationships and alter the distribution of political power, creating a system in which neither the greatest hopes of the supporters, nor the greatest fears of the opponents have been realized. Supporters hoped faith‐based initiatives would solve problems of poverty and an over‐burdened welfare system, while opponents feared rampant proselytizing with government funds.

In January 2002, investigative reporting at the Boston Globe set off a wave of revelations regarding child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and the transferring of abusive priests from parish to parish. Public allegations against clergy reached unprecedented levels; one Bishop would later refer to the period as “our 9/11.” Reeling from a growing awareness of abuse within their Church, a small group of Catholics gathered after Mass in the basement of a parish in Wellesley, Massachusetts to mourn and react. They began to mobilize around supporting victims of abuse, supporting non-abusive priests, and advocating for structural change in the Catholic Church so that abuse would no longer occur. Voice of the Faithful (VOTF) built a movement by harnessing the faith and fury of a nation of Catholics shocked by reports of abuse and institutional complicity. Some 30,000 around the United States formally joined the VOTF movement to reform the Catholic Church. this book offers an in-depth look at the development of VOTF and their struggle to challenge Church leaders, advocate for internal change, and be accepted as legitimately Catholic while doing so. In a study based on three years of field observation and interviews with VOTF founders, leaders, and participants in settings throughout the U.S., The book shows the contested nature of a religious movement operating within a bounded institutional space. Guided by the stories of individual participants, this book brings to light the intense identity negotiations that accompany a challenge to one’s own religion. This book offers a meaningful and accessible way to learn about Catholic identity, intra-institutional social movements, and the complexity of institutional structures.

The book provides a critical and constructive overview of historic and contemporary themes on the family in Christian social and political thought. The principal historic sources examined include Greco-Roman and biblical texts, patristic and medieval literature, and selected Reformation, Puritan, and 19th century authors. The development of modern liberal thought on marriage and family is subjected to extensive scrutiny by surveying the works of some of its leading founders, proponents, and contemporary critics, including a range of Christian theological responses. The chief weakness of late liberalism is that it promotes a voluntaristic vision of civil society, which portrays human associations solely as the outcome of the corporate will of autonomous individuals. The central constructive argument of the book is that such a vision has effectively eroded an understanding of the family as the most basic and natural form of human association, thereby diminishing contemporary Christian social and political thought. In order to rectify this situation, the philosophical and ideological presuppositions of late liberalism is subjected to critical analysis regarding its understanding of the nature of human associations in general, and the familial association in particular. Building upon this analysis, an alternative set of philosophical, theological, and moral presuppositions are developed, which provide the basis for developing a normative account of the family in opposition to that offered by late liberalism. This alternative account in turn may be used to inform contemporary Christian social and political thought.

Americans remain deeply ambivalent about teenage sexuality. Many presume that such uneasiness is rooted in religion. This book tackles such questions as: how exactly does religion contribute to the formation of teenagers' sexual values and actions? What difference, if any, does religion make in adolescents' sexual attitudes and behaviors? Are abstinence pledges effective? Who expresses regrets about their sexual activity and why? The book combines analyses of three national surveys with stories drawn from interviews with over 250 teenagers across America. It reviews how young people learn, and what they know about sex from their parents, schools, peers, and other sources. It examines what experiences teens profess to have had, and how they make sense of these experiences in light of their own identities as religious, moral, and responsible persons. The author's analysis discovers that religion can and does matter. However, the analysis finds that religious claims are often swamped by other compelling sexual scripts. Particularly interesting is the emergence of what the author calls a “new middle class sexual morality”, which has little to do with a desire for virginity but nevertheless shuns intercourse in order to avoid risks associated with pregnancy and STDs. And strikingly, evangelical teens aren't less sexually active than their non-evangelical counterparts, they just tend to feel guiltier about it. In fact, the analysis finds that few religious teens have internalized or are even able to articulate the sexual ethic taught by their denominations. The only-and largely ineffective-sexual message most religious teens are getting is: “don't do it until you're married”. Ultimately, the author concludes, religion may influence adolescent sexual behavior, but it rarely motivates sexual decision making.

Whether America was founded as a Christian nation or as a secular republic is one of the most fiercely debated questions in American history. This book offers an examination of the essential documents needed to understand this debate. The texts included in this volume—writings and speeches from both well-known and obscure early American thinkers—show that religion played a prominent yet fractious role in the era of the American Revolution. In their personal beliefs, the Founders ranged from profound skeptics like Thomas Paine to traditional Christians like Patrick Henry. Nevertheless, most of the Founding Fathers rallied around certain crucial religious principles, including the idea that people were “created” equal, the belief that religious freedom required the disestablishment of state-backed denominations, the necessity of virtue in a republic, and the role of Providence in guiding the affairs of nations. This book shows that through the struggles of war and the framing of the Constitution, Americans sought to reconcile their dedication to religious vitality with their commitment to religious freedom.