Suchergebnisse

AbstractCan a concept such as dignity, with roots in hierarchy and exclusion, serve as the constitutional basis for advancing egalitarian justice within a democratic political community? This article highlights some concerns, via engagement with the work of Indian constitutional architect and anti-caste champion B.R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar strongly associates dignity with upper-caste status in Hinduism, and with dispositions to haughtiness or arrogance toward lower-status persons. His analysis has implications for recent treatments which frame dignity as a property which is possessed equally by all persons and is suitable for grounding egalitarian justice within political communities. In such accounts, dignity is shown to entail a defensive disposition and indignation against others as potential rights violators. This introduces tensions between the dignitarian foundation and in some cases very expansive social justice aims. Ambedkar offers an alternative conception of innate worth or worthiness, entailing dispositions to openness and inclusiveness, rendered as fraternity, Deweyan social endosmosis, and ultimately the Buddhist maitri. Such an approach avoids some tensions between dignity/indignation and egalitarian aims, while also offering a way to conceptualize human and non-human animal relations that avoids simply reinscribing status hierarchies.

AbstractCritical Islam is an intellectual orientation that prizes timeliness and broad-mindedness and a political sensibility that tends to honor majority rule, minority rights, and the good of pluralism. This essay considers how an important European Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, promotes critical Islam in his call for a moratorium on stoning, his argument for the reformation offatwacommittees, and his analysis of the Arab Awakening. The essay argues that the art of controversy and the building of civil society—more so than political revolution—can cultivate a critical sensibility among Muslim scholars and publics.

AbstractRecently, political scientists and economists have redoubled their attempts to understand the "Rise of Europe." However, the role of the Catholic Church has been curiously ignored in most of this new research. The medieval West was shot through with Catholic values and institutions, and only by factoring in the Church can we understand the peculiar European development from the high Middle Ages onward. More particularly, the 11th century "crisis of church and state" set in train a series of developments that were crucial for the Rise of Europe. The Church was the main locale in which the development of representation, consent, and early bureaucratic institutions took place, and it contributed to creating, integrating, and maintaining the European multistate system. This note demonstrates that current scholarship has failed to factor in ecclesiastical influences and it shows how these gaps can be filled by a more careful reading of prior historical scholarship.

Abstract
The article analyzes the network structure and dynamics of the Spanish field of catholic-inspired secular organizations (CISO-N), and their mobilization against the Euthanasia Bill amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to a relational perspective, it adopts a historical-comparative approach to political opportunities that affect the praxis of these organizations. Drawing on 7-year fieldwork, including in-depth interviews with CISO-N activists and participant observation of their demonstrations, it traces CISO-N's discourse of 'moral panic' and ties to religious and political organizations, particularly the far-right party VOX. We advance a novel perspective, bridging literature on assisted dying and social movement studies, particularly focusing on far-right Christian populist mobilizations. The article offers one of the first sociological analyses of euthanasia as the new moral, political, and cultural neoconservative anti-rights front, which has been mainly studied from bioethics, socio-medical studies, and medical jurisprudence perspectives.

AbstractThis article analyzes the emergence of female Islamist leaders in the Middle East and North Africa, and the glaring contradictions between their feminist views and their roles as political activists for the Islamic State. The two Islamist leaders who form the primary focus of this analysis are Zaynab al-Ghazali (d. 2005) of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and Nadia Yassine of Morocco's Justice and Charity Society. Our analysis reveals the existence of "Islamistfeminism," distinguished from broader secular-oriented Islamic feminism, as a logical, albeit unique, extension, and expression of Muslim anti-colonial discourse rooted in the intellectual currents of twentieth century independence movements that still resonate today.

AbstractIn 2005, the European Commission formally inaugurated a "structured dialogue" between European institutions and major faith traditions and non-confessional bodies in Europe. The provision for dialogue was envisaged ostensibly as a mechanism to include religious and non-confessional perspectives in the ongoing construction of the wider European project. The language of "dialogue," consensus-seeking, and mutual learning dominates both religious and political justification for this formalized provision. Analysis considers emerging praxis in the intervening period (2005–2010) to determine the extent to which consensus-seeking has prevailed over the role of power and interests. Findings indicate that a number of elements relative to the configuration of dialogue praxis have severely inhibited the communicative potential of the provision enshrined in Article 17.

AbstractWe validate the classification of 16 "mainline" and 97 "evangelical" Protestant denominations inReligious Congregations and Membership in the United States, 2000based on Mark Chaves' five-point Biblical "inerrancy" scale. Using Glenmary county data, nearly perfect correlations were derived between the percentage of adherents in "evangelical" denominations and levels three-four on the Chaves scale and between the percentage of adherents in "mainline" denominations and level 1 on the Chaves scale. The distinguishing characteristic of Evangelical or Mainline Protestant denominations, therefore, is Biblical inerrancy or its absence. As a guide for future empirical research, this comprehensive listing of Evangelical and Mainline Protestant denominations should be employed in aggregate studies, especially where county-level analysis is applied to one state or a subset of states.

AbstractFew studies examine religiosity-of-interviewer effects, despite recent expansion of surveying in the Muslim world. Using data from a nationally-representative survey of 800 Moroccans conducted in 2007, this study investigates whether and why interviewer religiosity and gender affect responses to religiously-sensitive questions. Interviewer dress affects responses to four of six items, but effects are larger and more consistent for religious respondents, in support of power relations theory. Religious Moroccans provide less pious responses to secular-appearing interviewers, whom they may link to the secular state, and more religious answers to interviewers wearing hijab, in order to safeguard their reputation in a society that values piety. Interviewer traits do not affect the probability of item-missing data. Religiosity-of-interviewer effects depend on interviewer gender for questions about dress choice, a gendered issue closely related to interviewer dress. Interviewer gender and dress should be coded and controlled for to reduce bias and better understand social dynamics.

AbstractThis study tackles the place and role of the Orthodox Church in Serbian society, state, and political life after October 5, 2000. Owing to its present "symphony" with the state, the church now offers a new ideological framework and value-system for state institutions such as the armed forces and public education. This new role of the church is particularly emphasized in the current legislation. One could probably refer to the "etatization" of the Serbian Church, with some negative consequences for non-traditional religious communities. The relations with the Macedonian and Montenegrin Orthodox churches have also been discussed in this context. In post-Milošević Serbia, religious rights and freedoms have been considerably extended, but there is still a great deal of arbitrariness, even completely partial interpretations of the church-state relations. In the concluding section, this article deals with the church's traditionalist perception of society as narod (the people), with some recommendations as for the possible cooperation between the church and civil society in Serbia.

AbstractThe sweep of the coronavirus pandemic across the world and the United States offers an almost unparalleled opportunity to study how social systems cope with the threat and opportunities for collective action. In this paper, we draw on survey data collected as the United States flailed in response and before a general consensus among executive officeholders developed in the following weeks. In particular, we assess how holding prosperity gospel views strongly shaped perceptions of the virus and reactions to state responses to the virus. Research on the prosperity gospel is slowly expanding and this paper helps to highlight some missing dimensions. At a time when concerted action for the social good could be uniting the country, prosperity gospel beliefs systematically undermine that possibility by augmenting threat, raising outgroup barriers, and decreasing social trust.

AbstractThis is a study of the comparative outcome success experienced by 2748 participants in government-funded faith-based and community-based intervention programs for at-risk and adjudicated Latino youths run by 28 providers in five western cities. The Latino Coalition, an intermediary faith-based organization, subcontracted with 28 sub-grantees that provided the services from 2005–2008. The study found similar outcomes were experienced by youths in the faith-based versus the community-based programs, but it did find significantly different outcomes by the comprehensive versus non-comprehensive nature of the programs. The study places its findings in the context of faith-based and community initiatives and draws conclusions concerning the public policy implications of the government partnering with faith-based and community-based organizations to provide public services to needy, and especially minority, populations.

AbstractA growing body of literature criticizes the notion that Islamism issui generisand argues that it could be explained by existing conceptions about human behavior. This approach relies on rational choice theory and its derivatives, characterizing Islamists as rational political actors that engage in cost-benefit analysis and strategic calculation. This article evaluates the explanatory power of this characterization through three case studies, namely the Turkish Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), the Jordanian Islamic Action Front (Jabhat al-Amal al-Islami), and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun). It argues that although the approach offers explanations for Islamist pragmatism, this characterization has three major limitations: lack of room for ideological change, extreme voluntarism between violence and non-violence, and lack of insight for intra-group gender relations.

AbstractChristianity is in long-term decline in the United Kingdom, with decreasing levels of affiliation, practice, belief, and social authority. At the same time, however, Britain's churches and the faith they represent remain deeply embedded within culture and society. This paper offers the most comprehensive analysis to date of how the "sector" of UK Christian interest groups—that is, organizations with a Christian character that seek to influence government policy—operates within this changing socio-religious context. Based on survey and interview data, it examines the extent of Christian interest group activity in the UK, before assessing their issue agendas, lobbying strategies, and influence. The results indicate that the activities of Christian interest groups have been affected by decline, but also by Christianity's continued strengths within society. These findings provide a basis for deeper investigation of Christianity's political influence in the UK, and will also have implications beyond this case.

AbstractThis study delves into how non-Shi'a Lebanese assess Hezbollah and its activities. Having provided empirical evidence that Hezbollah has garnered positive perception in Lebanon, it asks what explains a substantial increase or decrease in favorable attitudes toward Hezbollah among Christians, Sunnis, and Druze? It argues that those who perceive Hezbollah as a resistance organization, as it often describes itself; the political alliance across sectarian groups; as well as insecurity caused by armed groups such as Sunni militant groups and ISIS, all combine to moderate people's views toward Hezbollah. Using an original, nationally representative face-to-face survey in Lebanon in 2015 and employing a multivariate statistical method, it finds that those who hold unfavorable views of the United States, those who support the political alliance of which Hezbollah is part, and those who support the Assad regime in Syria are likely to have a positive perception of Hezbollah and or its activities in the region.