Journal of Religion and Society 2022

Contemporary historians of Western lynching point out that the influential frontier justice interpretation has many weaknesses, especially its inattention to the role of race and ethnicity. Selected Jesuit incidental references both reflect the influence of this paradigm and support its contemporary critique by identifying frontier lynching as an Anglo-American practice.

Religiosity is a common predictor of abortion attitudes, especially among US Latinx. In this article, we examine religiosity, operationalized in various ways (e.g., affiliation, beliefs, practices), and abortion attitudes among US Latinx adults. We administered a web-based survey to English and Spanish-speaking US Latinx adults (n=169) using quota-based sampling to achieve demographic diversity. We tested differences in abortion attitudes using k-group median tests. Results indicate participants were less likely to support abortion legality and morality in some circumstances (e.g., if the woman is not married) than others (e.g., if the woman’s life is at risk). Participants who see the Bible as God’s literal word or attend religious services regularly were significantly less likely to support abortion legality or perceive abortion as moral. Biblical literalism and church attendance may be stronger predictors of abortion attitudes than religious identity. These findings highlight how religiosity may predict support for abortion legality and morality across several circumstances among Latinx adults.

This study examines the popularization of string theory in science literature and documentary film, which is presented to audiences with emphasis on the irreconcilability of two key paradigms in physics, quantum mechanics and general relativity, enabling the crowning of string theory as the long-sought “theory of everything.” As string theory is presented as physics’ final theory, a metaphysical rather than empirically based description of the cosmos, its writers draw upon heroic and religious language, and employ descriptions of prophesies of string particles, battling criticism of the theory, and finally a coronation and sainthood identity as the field of physics finally finds its theory of everything.

Islam has governed the operation of Muslim society in Kashmir, regardless of the geopolitical situation in the region. Muslims regard birth and death as transitions between two distinct lives, and marriage as a way of preserving humanity until the day of judgement. Nonetheless, the Kashmir valley’s diversity of identities and traditions demonstrates the spread of cultural components within and across distinct ethnic groupings. One example is the rites of passage practiced by Muslims in this Himalayan region, who, in defiance of Islam’s precepts, have included a variety of components into their birth, marriage, and death ceremonies, rendering them highly fascinating and unusual. Thus, this essay provides an in-depth examination of these facets of Kashmiri Muslims via an anthropological lens to comprehend both continuity and change from an Islamic perspective.

This article offers a new perspective on interactions between religion and urbanism through an exploration of the territorial strategy implemented by the Catholic Archdiocese of Seoul, South Korea, in the late twentieth century. In this growing Northeast Asian metropolis, the archdiocese was remarkably prosperous, benefitting from drastic urban development, a rapid nationwide economic boom, and the boost given to Catholicism around the world by the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). By mapping and statistically analyzing the construction of parish churches between 1973 and 1994, we argue that the archdiocese strengthened its influence over society and space in the city thanks to a strategy that was open and responsive to the extensive urban development driven by central and local governments.

This study seeks to examine the effects of early religious experiences on later decisions regarding organized religious involvement among a study population of college students at a mid-sized public state university in the Midwestern United States. This project fills a gap in the existing literature by performing an exploratory study regarding students who maintain religious participation in college, continue involvement with the church at a decreased frequency, and those who permanently cease religious involvement during the college years. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are used to examine how positive and negative religious experiences impact decisions post-high school and what overarching trends exist in this study population’s experience in religious institutions. The study includes an examination of the relationship between the perception of the church as an institution and patterns of involvement.

The embers of heresy in Christianity were neither snuffed out in antiquity nor in the Middle Ages. The United States of the twentieth century was home to its own champions of theological unorthodoxy; chief among them was Herbert W. Armstrong, whom conservative evangelicals branded as dangerously and even satanically heretical. Despite Armstrong’s straying from traditional Protestant orthodoxy, from the 1930s onward, he was able to create a massive publishing and religious “empire,” as evangelicals called it. Although Armstrong had a global footprint, the scholarship on American religion is largely silent when it comes to this religious leader. Even less has been written about the tension between evangelicals and Armstrong, their theological opponent. This article brings to light this history of accusations of heresy, examining the rhetoric that surrounded it and how the allegation of theological unorthodoxy fit and fed into an atmosphere of alarm during the Cold War.