This article analyzes lyrics of American Islamic hip hop songs that address views of Muslims as threats to American society as well as negative views of Muslim women. As an alternative to these views, hip hop artists remind Muslim listeners of the Qur'anic principle that they are the best of all peoples, so listeners will define themselves according to this principle and therefore persevere in Islamic faith. Musicological analysis follows this lyrical analysis, revealing a shared temporal structure both lyrically and musically, which strengthens these songs' lyrical reminder.

Messianic Judaism is a movement of people who identify as Jews and self-consciously embrace – although to degrees that can differ quite widely – Jewish culture and religious tradition, while at the same time maintaining a belief in the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the authority of the New Testament. Despite a wide range of contemporary response to the question of what constitutes Jewishness, all four major denominations of Judaism agree that Messianic Jews are not acceptably Jewish, and that Jewishness is utterly incompatible with belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. This research uses the unambiguous Jewish rejection of contemporary Messianic Judaism as a platform for thinking about the construction of heresy and its study. By examining mainstream Jewish responses to Jewish believers in Jesus, both in Israel and in North America, we see that this "heresy" is not primarily an issue of belief, but rather a form of discipline that speaks from and to particular social locations, historical relationships and distribution of power.

Many American Christians perceive that their faith is derided in public discourse. This negative portrayal is usually attributed to the secular media, which is assumed by many Christians to be liberal and biased against Christianity. This article develops an alternative mechanism for the production and distribution of bad news about Christianity – from the leaders of Christianity themselves. Church leaders may deploy negative portrayals of the church, as "failing," in "crisis," or otherwise not living up to Christian standards, in order to motivate their followers. We term this strategic negative portray the "Christian-failure narrative." We develop this concept by examining in-depth one particular Christian failure narrative – the belief that Christians have inordinately high divorce rates. We compare popular perceptions of Christians' divorce rates versus actual rates found in sociological data.

This paper explores the impact of religiosity on personal financial decisions. Specifically, I examine whether people in areas of high religious social norms are likely to have higher credit scores and lower levels of credit card debt, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. Prior research suggests a link between individual religiosity, ethical behavior, and risk aversion with results that show how these attributes influence managerial actions. I find that these links also influence personal financial behavior in that individuals located in areas with higher levels of religiosity take less risk and display higher ethical standards. My results suggest that individuals residing in areas with strong religious social norms tend to have significantly higher credit scores as well as significantly lower levels of credit card balances, foreclosures, and bankruptcies compared to those individuals residing in areas with lower levels of religiosity.

The intellectual discourse of Muslim elites born and educated in a Western environment gives impetus, sometimes not entirely consciously, to the debate on the critical potential of the public sphere. This new Islamic critique suggests that the Western public spheres lose their cohesive force and political thrust and practically dismantle into fragmented, disparate, and alienated discourses under increasing transnational pressures because they have never questioned their normative secular underpinnings. This new critical insight implies new modes of public participation and occasions a transformation of the traditional notion of public sphere as it has been described by prominent Western theoreticians of modernity (such as Jurgen Habermas). The debate between the classical Western approach to "public sphere" and modernity and the "new" Islamic critique of it (via Tariq Ramadan, Fethi Benslama, and Malek Chebel) is at the center of this paper.

Despite emerging interest in congregations as social service providers in communities across the U.S., recent studies have offered troubling critiques of congregation-based social services, namely that they exhibit limited participation from community members and consist largely of short-term programs. In response to these critiques, this paper will suggest Paul R. Dokecki's framework for reflective-generative practice as particularly applicable to congregation-based services. Following important ethical considerations for professional practice and congregation-based services, this paper discusses features of reflective-generative practice related to increased community participation and temporal-spatial generativity in congregation-based services.

This paper discusses the syncretism of both Catholicism and Voodoo in New Orleans and explains how the adaptable Catholicism of New Orleans provides ample support for the growth rather than repression of Voodoo. Among the shared elements between Catholicism and Voodoo that permit syncretism, I discuss three means which scholarship and my own field research in New Orleans continuously reaffirm: the reliance on ritual to facilitate liturgical practices, the veneration of lesser intermediaries, and a desire for intimate union with the divine. An examination of the elements that permit syncretism lead to a conclusion that the presence of Voodoo in New Orleans is as a direct result from syncretism with Catholicism and that Catholicism in New Orleans actually serves as an assistance to the continuation of Voodoo rather than an impediment.