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With the rising of “religious fever” in China rural area, the authors inquire the reason why it happened. First, the authors explore the group characteristics which could affect both happiness and the religion belief of Chinese rural elderly. The authors analyze the micro-data of “thousand village surveys” data of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics by using Order Logit and Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method. These results show that when the elderly people have the following features related to health such as: feeling psychological loneliness, not obtaining the good management of chronic disease in the village, and not being participated in new rural cooperative medical system are more likely to believe in religious in the rural areas. And the authors also find these Chinese rural elderlies who believe in religion are less happy than atheism elderly actually (by PSM). Believing in religion is not the solution and maybe the way these elderly resorts to when they encounter health problem.

Religion and philosophy satisfy the basic human needs of understanding, belonging, and finding meaning. They provide tranquility of mind and satisfy the desire to be loved and lovable. However, they present their own failings and can counter each other in positive and negative ways, that threaten the communities of beliefs they form and their interactions. An appropriate institutional framework can control the fanaticism and sectarianism that can come with established religion and philosophy.

This chapter engages with both religion and paradox in leadership and organization research by focusing on three sources of paradoxical tensions and how they are shaped by religion: worldly limits, diverse interpretations, and emerging relationships. First, regarding worldly limits, religion is predicated on an additional “very macro” level of reality, transcendence. This belief offers a distinct way of engaging with paradoxes as it extends the worldly realm’s boundaries. Second, contradictory interpretations of religions may rise, even among members of the same faith, leading to new cognitive paradoxes. Dynamizing boundaries between contradictory elements may allow organizations to maintain unity in a diversity of interpretations. Third, concerning emerging relationships, religions are global phenomena that are experienced side by side in multiple societal terrains. They cut across diverse social systems and give rise to novel relationships. This creates new tensions and paradoxical encounters, as religions traverse borders and boundaries and encounter existing social beliefs, structures, and practices. The expansion, dynamization, and shifting of boundaries then shapes persistent contradictions among interdependent elements. Our field should appreciate and embrace conflicting mysteries and paradoxes across boundaries. We may only need some faith.

We should begin with making clear our limitations in responding to Gorski's article. We are not experts in the debates about American civil religion. Like most sociologists of religion we are familiar with Bellah's (1967) Daedalus article and its great influence. We have not followed closely the empirical work that sought to test whether a civil religion actually exists in America or elsewhere, and only casually followed the more theoretical debates surrounding the concept itself. We are actually better versed in Gorski's work and from that perspective we think his article on Obama and civil religion can be usefully read as a continuation of a line of reasoning he launched more than 10 years ago with his American Sociological Review article on historicizing secularization. In that article he claimed that it was probable that “Western society has become more secular without becoming less religious” and explained why (Gorski, 2000, p. 138). Barack Obama's invocation of an American civil religion and its popular reception by liberal Americans fits well with this line of reasoning. In the heady days of 2008, many liberal Americans seemed to have found (civil) religion with Obama – a surprising turn of events in need of explanation.

The purpose of this study is to examine Latino adolescents’ perceptions of the effects of religion on family relationships in the context of intersecting variables of influence such as assimilation, family structure, and migration.

Consistent with the ecological and acculturation frameworks, this qualitative, exploratory study uses directed content analysis to analyze responses from 37 religiously diverse Latino adolescents to open-ended, semi-structured questions from the National Study of Youth and Religion to explore religious influence.

Results suggest that Latino adolescents feel that religion impacts family relationships, with higher degrees of positive religious influence expressed by Baptists and Latino males. Christians (various denominations) were more likely to report that religion affected family relationships than Catholics. All participants who stated that religion exerted a negative influence came from nontraditional families. Youths of Central/South American and Puerto Rican descent were more likely to report that religion affected family relationships positively than were Mexican adolescents. Overall, Latinas girls were more likely to have strong opinions about religion and family relationships than Latino males. Results also suggest an intersection between the Latino cultural values of respeto and marianismo with religion.

Although this study is exploratory and the sample was diverse, the results are not generalizable.

This study provides a sociological lens to the experiences of a rapidly changing and growing demographic in the United States – Latinos. These findings would be of importance to those who are interested in supporting Latino families and facilitating positive adolescent outcomes.

This article reviews research published in secular management journals that examines what the world’s largest religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, and Islam) say about management. In terms of how religion informs management, the literature identifies two basic means: (1) written scriptures (e.g., Analects, Bible, Quran) and (2) experiential spiritual practices (e.g., prayer, mindfulness). In terms of what religion says about management, the emphasis tends to be either on (1) enhancing, or (2) liberating mainstream management. Studies based on scriptures typically either enhance or liberate management, whereas empirical research based on spiritual disciplines consistently point to liberation. Implications are discussed.

The early institutional theory literature highlighted religion as a core societal institution that influences the behaviours of individuals and organisations. Yet to date, religion has remained relatively unexplored in the management and organisational theory literature. This chapter draws on the idea of homophily – similarity breeds connection to explore a peculiarly instructive case focussing on how religion might influence employees’ trust in the CEO in the Nigerian context – generally assumed to be a religious society. The qualitative study employed a multiple case study design with 40 interviewees from two private sector organisations. The study found religion to be instrumental in developing trust relationships. However, contrary to the idea of homophily, it is not religious similarities per se that influence employees’ trust in the CEOs. Instead, employees’ trust is predicated upon them attributing inherent to the CEOs. Therefore, the study provides theoretical and practical insights into how institutional logics, specifically religious logic, influence employees’ behaviours.

The rites and practices of folk religion in Nigeria cut across virtually all conventional and emerging social institutions in the country. The inability of the State to perform many of its functions has encouraged this trend, with many turning to folk religion and associated practices in attempts to control uncertain situations. Unemployed/underemployed young gamblers have begun to incorporate and normalise the combination of spiritual elements with sports betting activities in a bid to translate games of uncertainty into games of certainty. This study attempts to conceptualise how and why young people adopt, practice and make sense of folk religion in relation to sports betting.

Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were used to interrogate and analyse the lived experiences of key actors living in the capital city of Ilorin, Kwara State, a place renowned for the widespread practice of folk religious rites: 20 unemployed/underemployed young sports bettors and 10 folk doctors. Collected data were transcribed manually and subjected to inductive content analysis, using grounded theory. The combination of folk religion with sports betting is fast becoming normalised as young Nigerians seek to survive harsh economic conditions. Adoption is also linked with belief in traditions, in-group conflicts, gambling adverts, lack of luck and greed. Folk religious practices combine elements from the natural and spiritual worlds. This study formulates concepts for understanding the complexity of such practices concerning gambling among young sports bettors in Nigeria.

A growing interdisciplinary literature explores how people can simultaneously hold strong convictions and remain open to the possibility of learning from others with whom they disagree. This tension impacts not only knowledge development but also public discourse within a diverse and disagreeing democracy. This volume of Political Power and Social Theory considers the specific question of how religious convictions inform how people engage in democratic life, particularly across deep political divides. In this introduction, I begin by discussing how a narrow vision of religious citizens as dogmatic believers has led observers to frame religion as a concerning source of democratic distortion – encouraging too much arrogance and not enough humility. Yet this dogmatic believer narrative captures only one aspect of American religion. Juxtaposing a snapshot of dogmatic believers alongside two other snapshots of religious groups engaging in political life raises complex questions about the relationship between religious conviction, humility, and democracy in a time of deep political polarization. I argue that answering these questions requires a sociological approach that is attuned to power, context, culture, institutions, and history. At the same time, I show how attention to the tension between conviction and humility has the potential to enrich the sociological study of religion and democracy, and particularly ethnographic research across the moral/political divide.