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America's contentious relationship to Darwinism is often inadequately viewed as the product of religious reaction or educative failure. I argue that evolutionary biology has proven contentious in America because of the unique political context into which Darwin's ideas emerged. After the Civil War, evolution's content, and the predominately Northern scientists who supported it, became associated with the politics of radical Republicanism and racial egalitarianism. The Darwinian revision of the concept of racial variety made a polygenist conception of human origins untenable and discredited the structural inequalities implied by the rival "American School of Anthropology". Whereas before Darwin, natural history had formed an important part of the justification for slavery, after the publication of "The Origin of Species" in 1859, natural history became distasteful to the southern planters and slaveholders who had previously appealed to scientific authority. Because of the particular historical, social, and political context into which Darwinian evolution emerged in the United States, to believe or not to believe in evolution carried social and political connotations about ones fidelity to white supremacy, and called into question ones identity within the larger milieux of American political traditions and groups. Debates over evolution have been inextricably bound to a complex set of beliefs about race and political practices that have upheld white supremacy, sometimes called Southern nationalism, Southern civil religion, or ascriptive Americanism, which have operated to channel Southern understanding and treatment of evolution. The history of evolution in America teaches us how communities of identity use ideological beliefs to identify themselves as members of particular political and social groups, and how a constellation of mutually supporting ideas about the right to participate in the American polity and the nature of racial identity have shaped American reactions to science, religion, and society. Beliefs about racial identity and the constructed myths of Southern nationalism channeled white Southern reaction against evolutionary biology in ways that boosted the religious response to the scientific threat to white supremacy and increased the feeling that evolutionary biologists taught a dangerous, alien doctrine that was morally and socially subversive. The rejection of evolution by many Americans, especially in the South, has often been a way to signal and police social and political group boundaries. Because Darwinism had overthrown the scientific basis for polygeny, was supported by abolitionist New Englanders, and was charged with racially subversive undertones, while also challenging the conservative, Christian justifications for white supremacy, white Southerners reacted against evolution as a scientific doctrine, and in so doing they signaled support for the prevailing racial order and acted in solidarity to create the social and political ideology that sustained the Solid South

This study explores how religious women become legitimate actors in the public sphere and analyzes their agency—its meanings, capacities, and transformative aims. It presents a novel case study of Israeli Modern-Orthodox Agunah activists who engage in highly politicized collective feminist resistance as religious actors working for religious ends. Embedded in and activated by Orthodoxy, they advocate women's rights to divorce, voicing a moral critique of tradition and its agents precisely because they are devoutly devoted to them. Such political agency is innovatively conceptualized as "devoted resistance": critique within relationship, enabled by cultural schema, and comprising both interpretive skills and "relational-autonomy" capacities. This study contends that understanding agency within religious grammars reveals its underlying logics, highlighting how structures shape the meanings and realization of women's varied "agentive capacities." It challenges current dichotomies like feminism/religion, resistance/submission, and autonomy/dependence. Overall, the author argues for a nuanced, culturally specific, capacity-based, relational approach to analyzing religious women's agency.

Religion can be a source of undemocratic attitudes but also a contributor to democratic norms. This article argues that different dimensions of religiosity generate contrasting effects on democratic attitudes through different mechanisms. The private aspect of religious belief is associated with traditional and survival values, which in turn decrease both overt and intrinsic support for democracy. The communal aspect of religious social behaviour increases political interest and trust in institutions, which in turn typically lead to more support for democracy. Results from multilevel path analyses using data from fifty-four countries from Waves 4 and 5 of the World Values Survey suggest there is some regularity in mechanisms responsible for the effect of religiosity on democratic support that extend beyond religious denomination.

Religion is one of the basic institutions of a society. The study aims to find the religious hindrances faced by women in participating in active politics at district Charsadda, Pakistan. The nature of the study is quantitative, and the questionnaire/interview schedule used is as a tool of data collection for collecting information from the sample size of 130 respondents through simple random sampling. The primary data has analysed in univariate analyses through descriptive statistics to find the frequency and percentages of the data when. The bivariate data has been analysed by applying the Chi-square test in inferential statistics to find the association between dependent and independent the variables. The findings show that in a patriarchal society, the strong religious followers restrict women to household activities only (P=0.003). The misinterpretation of religion is another factor which keeps women outside politics (P=0.001). The study recommends that all the institutions should take necessary steps along with the leaders of religious school for building a consensus on women role in politics. They should take the initiative to create awareness about women's participation in politics and their leadership role. It would help improve women's status with a dynamic role in all spheres of life.

This article seeks to understand the influence of religion/spirituality on services provided and on the governance of faith-based civil society organizations during the Covid-19 pandemic. 22 coordinators of 17 Brazilian organizations that work in the governance of children's rights at the local level are interviewed. The results point to organizational expressions of religiosity, added services, and developed communication and networking capabilities. The research highlights the religion/spirituality dimension in network governance between different actors and the community, characterized by interdependence and intersectionality, and discusses contradictory factors that increase or decrease governance capacity.