Search results

Resistances of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGO) to the construction of gendered religious nationalism are addressed. The implications of such resistances and redefinitions of gendered religious nationalism for the women’s movement in India and transnationally are also assessed.

Semi-structured interviews with leaders and/or key informants of purposively selected organizations in the state of Gujarat serve as the primary data for the chapter. Using a grounded theory approach, the study is a qualitative analysis of the interviews and a reading of major published documents, unpublished reports, and internal reports of the NGOs that were made available.

The analysis discerns three main frames deployed by NGOs in resisting attempts by the state to construct nationalism: Communal Harmony (Not Communal Violence), “Endangered” Woman and Gender Mainstreaming. The “communal harmony, not communal violence” frame views women as an ungendered part of their communities. Although women are made central to the religious violence and struggle, they are viewed as passive persons without rights. This passive frame is the “endangered woman” frame. But women’s groups and NGOs addressing the violence have actively sought to emphasize the gender aspect of all formal and informal political activities. This is the “gender mainstreaming” frame. However, the mere visibility of women in political discourse should not be confused with the feminist framing of women’s rights or mainstreaming women’s issues.

The analysis brings an organizational agency perspective to consider resistance to the gendered basis of the violence perpetrated and embedded in nationalism.

All religious activists appear to look alike, and indeed are treated by the news media as one in the same. However, many variations exist. On one level, different activists choose different tactics. Terrorism is only the most extreme (and the rarest) form of public action. Other activists utilize media campaigns, public intimidation and democratic choice (by putting forward candidates in elections). On a more basic level, great differences exist in the desired outcome of the struggle itself and in the degree to which religion is central to the conflict.

In 1967, Robert N. Bellah famously argued that there existed an “American Civil Religion,” which was distinct from churchly religion and captured the “transcendental” dimension of the American project. In this chapter, I revisit the civil religion concept and reconstruct it along more Weberian lines. Specifically, I argue that the civil religion tradition is one of three competing traditions for thinking about the proper relationship between religion and politics in America; the other two are religious nationalism and liberal secularism. Whereas liberal secularism envisions a complete separation of the religious and political value spheres, and religious nationalism longs for their (re)unification, civil religion aims for a mediating position of partial separation and productive tension. Following Bellah, I argue that the two central strands of the civil religion tradition have been covenant theology and civic republicanism. The body of the chapter sketches out the development of the tradition across a series of national foundings and refoundings, focusing on the writings of leading civil theologians from John Winthrop and John Adams through Abraham Lincoln and John Dewey to Martin King and Barack Obama. The conclusion advances a normative argument for American civil religion – and against liberal secularism and religious nationalism. I contend that liberalism is highly inclusive but insufficiently solidaristic; that religious nationalism is highly solidaristic but insufficiently inclusive; and that only civil religion strikes a proper balance between individual autonomy and the common good.

This chapter provides a cross-cultural look at the intersection of religion and the state with a focus on social control, social movements, political authority, and legitimacy. To better understand the complexities of governance, this chapter examines state social control of religion with a specific focus on the effects of that control on society. State leaders often seek to control and use the power of religion to gain legitimacy, authority, and control over citizens. Conversely, religious leaders sometimes seek to engage and even control the power of the state. This chapter highlights some of what happens when religious leaders directly engage in politics and challenge the social control mechanisms of political authority.

At times religious majorities seek not only to participate in the public square, to make policy, but also to exercise complete control of political and cultural institutions. In many nations, from Christians in the United States to Buddhists in Myanmar, some religious and government leaders share the goal of complete religious control over their societies. What happens to the religions and to the society when these religious and government leaders are successful? What happens to the religion when a state controls, supports, and promotes that religion? This chapter uses the case histories of the repression of the Muslim minority by the Buddhists nationalists in Myanmar and the desires of the United States Christian Dominionists goals to illustrate and highlight the way that the twin powers of the state and religion serve as direct agents of social control by transmitting values of each institution through law, policy, and by punishing those who deviate.

In 1967, Robert N. Bellah famously argued that there existed an “American Civil Religion,” which was distinct from churchly religion and captured the “transcendental” dimension of the American project. In this chapter, I revisit the civil religion concept and reconstruct it along more Weberian lines. Specifically, I argue that the civil religion tradition is one of three competing traditions for thinking about the proper relationship between religion and politics in America; the other two are religious nationalism and liberal secularism. Whereas liberal secularism envisions a complete separation of the religious and political value spheres, and religious nationalism longs for their (re)unification, civil religion aims for a mediating position of partial separation and productive tension. Following Bellah, I argue that the two central strands of the civil religion tradition have been covenant theology and civic republicanism. The body of the chapter sketches out the development of the tradition across a series of national foundings and refoundings, focusing on the writings of leading civil theologians from John Winthrop and John Adams through Abraham Lincoln and John Dewey to Martin King and Barack Obama. The conclusion advances a normative argument for American civil religion – and against liberal secularism and religious nationalism. I contend that liberalism is highly inclusive but insufficiently solidaristic; that religious nationalism is highly solidaristic but insufficiently inclusive; and that only civil religion strikes a proper balance between individual autonomy and the common good.

The disparities of COVID-19 vaccination rates between the rural and urban areas have become apparent during this pandemic. There is a need to understand the root causes of vaccine hesitancy demonstrated by the rural population to increase coverage and to contain the disease spread throughout the United States. This study aimed to explore other factors influencing vaccine hesitancy among rural dwellers besides the geography-related barriers such as poor health care access and individuals having no or suboptimal insurance coverage.

By reviewing existing data and literature about vaccination, health literacy, and behaviors, and prevailing ideologies, we discuss the potential causes of vaccine hesitancy in rural areas that could create barriers for successful public health efforts related to vaccine coverage and provide suggestions to ameliorate the situation.

Geography-related barriers, health literacy, and preconceived notions are key determinants of adopting healthy behaviors and complying with public health authorities' recommendations among rural individuals during a public-health crisis. We argue that ideology, which is much deeper than preconception or misconception on vaccination, should be incorporated as a key factor to redefine the term “vulnerable populations” in public health research.

The limitation of our study is that we have not found an effective way to encourage the populations who hold conservative religious and political ideologies to join the efforts for public health. Even though geography-related barriers may strongly impact the rural dwellers in achieving optimal health, the various forms of ideologies they have toward certain health behaviors cannot be discounted to understand and address vaccine-related disparities in rural areas. There is a need to redefine the term “vulnerable population” particularly as it relates to rural areas in the United States. During large-scale public health disasters, scholars and public health authorities should consider the ideologies of individuals, in addition to other factors such as race/ethnicity, area of residence (rural vs. urban), and socioeconomic factors influencing the existing vulnerabilities and health disparities.

Philip S. Gorski's “Barack Obama and civil religion” seeks to revive and reform the concept of civil religion. This response addresses two sets of issues raised by the entwined analytic and normative claims in the chapter. The first concerns the definition of civil religion, including how the civil and religious spheres are connected within it and how civil religion differs conceptually from other related models. The second concerns whether a renewed commitment to civil religion will provide a platform for greater openness and pluralism, as Gorski claims.

Intellectual humility and religious conviction are often posed as antagonistic binaries; the former associated with science, reason, inclusive universality, and liberal secularism, the latter with superstition, dogma, exclusive particularity, and rigid traditionalism. Despite popular images of white American evangelicals as the embodied antithesis of intellectual humility, responsiveness to facts, and openness to the other, this article demonstrates how evangelicals can and do practice intellectual humility in public life while simultaneously holding fast to particularistic religious convictions. Drawing on textual analysis and multi-site ethnographic data, it demonstrates how observed evangelical practices of transposable and segmented reflexivity map onto pluralist, domain-specific conceptualizations of intellectual humility in the philosophical and psychological literature. It further argues that the effective practice of intellectual humility in the interests of ethical democracy does not require religious actors to abandon particularistic religious reasons for universal secular ones. Rather, particularistic religious convictions can motivate effective practices of intellectual humility and thereby support democratic pluralism, inclusivity, and solidarity across difference. More broadly, it aims to challenge, or at least complicate, the widespread notion that increasing strength of religious conviction always moves in lockstep with increasing dogmatism, tribalism, and intellectual unreasonableness.

With this paper we aimed to explore the matter of space as a physical expression of institutional logics. Following recent discussions on the role of materiality in organizational discourse, this study focused on spatial dimensions of institutional logics, namely, spatialized logics. Utilizing Lefebvre’s (1991) analytic distinction among three layers of space – conceived, lived, and perceived – we described the spatial expressions of distinct logics and the spatial relations among these logics. Drawing on a qualitative case study analysis of the world-renowned site of Jerusalem’s Western Wall, we argued that logics take form in space, logics get embodied in different layers of space, and matters of discursive commensurability and leakages also have spatial expressions. To exemplify these claims we undertook a qualitative case study analysis of Jerusalem’s Western Wall. The Wall is a 500-meter-long and two-millennia-old construction. We showed that, while in material and technical terms the Wall is a singular entity, three distinct logics occupy distinct sections along the Wall, and each of these logics reinterprets the materials and technicalities in distinct ways: religious, professional, and nationalistic. These three distinct spatialized logics get embodied in the conceived space (planning and policy of the site), perceived space (comments and opinions about the site), and lived space (behavior and social interaction at the site). Overall, by interjecting notions of materiality and space into the conversation about institutional logics, we demonstrated that in the physical layout of a space, logic cohesion, and interlogic commensurability literally become a “turf war.”