Journal of Religion and Society Supplement 26

In 1930s Austria, a para-fascist regime replaced democracy with corporatism. Corporatism, as outlined by Pius XI’s Encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, rejected both classical liberalism and socialism in favor of social cooperation between orders. Although the application of corporatism in Austria was incomplete, the emotional power of the letter was remarkably current. This article provides context for the appeal of the Encyclical to authoritarian regimes suffering from economic distress, class conflict, and political polarization. The promise of harmonious order within the letter resonated with the leaders of the “New Austria,” where repressive political and social change was justified through Catholic teaching.

The story of the rise and transformation of the American conservative movement largely characterizes the Religious Right as established, comprised, and led by evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. Through highlighting the impact of Catholic actors, institutions, and issue agendas in the years 1950–1990, however, this critical literature review illustrates that Catholics also played an important and active role. I show that Catholics fastened coalitional ties and built foundations on which the conservative movement has grown and, contrary to existing scholarship, Catholics were a faithful force in the rise of the Religious Right, rather than mere foot soldiers awaiting activation.

This article begins to develop a response to the New Integralism. According to the New Integralists, civil-political authority should be subordinated to ecclesial-spiritual authority. In other words, the state should be subordinate to the church. This article first considers the cultural, philosophical, and religious diversity that characterizes democratic societies and how liberal political philosophy attempts to accommodate such diversity. This article then turns to Catholic Social Teaching and scripture to argue that the New Integralism isn’t consistent with magisterial teaching and also fails as a Christian argument.

Scholars have long studied the relationship between religion and politics. This study aims to add to the conversation on this relationship by assessing a unique religiosity measure, that of beliefs about the character of God. Utilizing the 2021 Values and Beliefs of the American Public (n=1,336), this study assesses how beliefs about God independently and comparatively impact support for government policies and social movements. Results show that the belief that God is active in the world has the greatest association with policy attitudes. Further, racial identity is a significant moderator for the relationship between belief that God is active and policy support amongst the white sample. This study calls for scholars to broaden their measures of religiosity beyond affiliation when examining the relationship between religion and politics.

Theological knowledge, often associated with religious authority, is also developed and refined by laity. In mainline Protestant congregations, lay theologizing at the local level contributes to processes in which LGBTQ+ congregants and non-LGBTQ+ allies work to transform their churches into more inclusive spaces. I focus on collaborative discussions about LGBTQ+ issues that I observed during ethnographic fieldwork in three mainline churches’ small groups and Bible studies that lay members organized and facilitated. Group participants discern their beliefs around queerness and Christianity, particularly through contesting interpretations of a set of biblical verses—colloquially referred to as the “clobber passages”—that have traditionally been used as tools to attack and exclude LGBTQ+ people. By contributing to these discussions, LGBTQ+ congregants claim equal presence within Christian institutions, work with non-LGBTQ+ members to propose changes to combat marginalizing behaviors and policies in their congregations and prepare defenses for those changes if they are challenged by non-affirming parishioners.

Between January to April 2023, at least 417 anti-LGBTQ bills had been introduced in state legislatures in the United States. Many of these bills focus on transgender care or gender affirming care and attempt to legislate against such care. The contemporary social change in the United States and elsewhere towards recognition of the reality and lived experience of transgender people and the medical treatment and care which they seek often conflicts with, and is opposed legally and morally by, religious perspectives on human sexuality and traditional doctrinal teachings. That conflict is clearly on display in recent official Catholic teaching. On March 20, 2023, the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) weighed in on this culture-war issue and issued its own statement, a Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits of Technological Manipulation of the Human Body. In this essay, we analyze that Note and agree with Daniel Horan’s assessment that the Note is a “disaster.” We offer theological, biblical, anthropological, scientific, and experiential critiques of it to sustain that charge.

The advent of Red Pill discourses among online content creators and social media platforms has become a significant feature of contemporary gender discourses. In particular, these discourses, which pivot upon a return to traditional gender ideologies and social structures that privilege patriarchal excess, have contributed to pervasive conflicts between women and men. This article considers some of the cultural and gendered ideological loggerheads among African Americans. Posturing Red Pill gender paradigms as contributing to a resurgence of problematic notions of masculinity and the overall subordination of women, this article draws on Black religious thinking, womanist discourses, and the writing of James Baldwin to comment upon the challenges and conflicts posed by Red Pill philosophy, as well as seeks to address why this discourse appeals to African American males and what societal resources can offer a resolution to the conflict.

The Asian Rural Institute (ARI) is a Christian-based non-profit and sustainable farm in Tochigi, Japan. Food sovereignty—as a collection of movements for social change—emphasizes the rights of people to consume and grow nutritious and culturally meaningful food; resist corporate ownership of land, water, and seeds; and prioritize gender equity and community relationships around food production. I argue that ARI’s faith-based conceptualization of food sovereignty manifests as a sense of place, transferable principles, and knowledge of appropriate technology. This essay has implications for movement building at the local and global levels.

This article proposes how Catholics might discerningly organize ecclesial nonviolent direct action to secure a science-based decarbonization policy in their local diocese. First, the essay argues that faithfulness to the church’s mission requires advocacy for and commitment to prudent diocesan decarbonization. Next, the article outlines the science and theology of data-driven decarbonization, and highlights diocesan examples, failures, and opportunities of such policies. Third the essay applies proven social action theories of Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gene Sharp, and Robert Helvey to propose how Catholics might discerningly organize ecclesial nonviolent direct action for a science-based diocesan decarbonization policy.

Since the 1960s, U.S. Catholic sisters’ numbers have declined dramatically. Existing research suggests that declining organizations often become more insular and cling to the status quo. This research asks how Catholic sisters understand decline and how decline influences sisters’ advocacy for social change. Drawing on qualitative interviews with forty U.S. Catholic sisters, we find that many sisters are responding to organizational decline by becoming less insular and pushing their activism forward, opposite of what existing literature might predict. We suggest that this difference may be due to the unique “circular” leadership structure of sisters.

This article examines the role that the polemical concept of religious fanaticism played in anti-abolitionist, pro-slavery literature, specifically anti-Tom novels written in the 1850s by white women protesting Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Through narrative arcs, character archetypes, and moral lessons, these authors portrayed abolitionism as a movement driven by excessive feeling, errant “facts,” a corrupted form of Christianity, and an undue sympathy for Black people. In leveraging the language of fanaticism to argue that abolitionism was based on “wrong feelings,” the novels worked to instill in readers an alternative sentimental regime based on love towards white Christian (often Protestant) families and the subjugation of Black people. This article concludes with a reflection on the role that sentiment plays in movements for and against social change.

In this paper I compare the confluence of religious practice, communication technology, and social change in nineteenth-century Spiritualism and contemporary AI chatbots. I suggest that in the nineteenth century and now our cultural experiences of death on a massive scale are reflected in our attempts to write with the dead. At the same time, communicating with the dead reveals the inequities of life on earth. Thus, I show that our written communication practices—both then and now—offer a window into how our religion encounters and shapes social change in the U.S.

Religion, while not eliminating suffering, provides the foundation for social change by inspiring conversion that opens hearts and minds precisely through challenging situations. Humanity inevitably suffers and responds with either selfishness or selflessness. Physiological implications of pain, emotions, and autonomic responses influence the choice, as do metaphysical, subconscious, and theological inspirations. Secular measurements of post-traumatic growth seek perceived changes in psychological traits and behaviors. Aquinas theologically embraces Christ’s passion as the source for virtuous growth. Simon Weil recognized the cross as the point of conversion. By tearing each person’s heart, suffering challenges humanity to choose to love God and neighbor.