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“The Politics of Devotion” is a social, political, and intellectual history of Catholicism in the Spanish colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico during the last third of the nineteenth century. Against the backdrop of persistent quarrels about freedom of religion and political independence in which Liberals and Freemasons played a central role, the project argues that the twin threats of secularism and separatism pushed Catholicism to become a militant political stance in the island colonies. Faced with debates about would-be independent nations where Catholicism would be dethroned as the State religion, it became clear to both common Catholics and ecclesiastics that for Catholicism to survive, it was imperative that the Spanish Empire prevail. The dissertation therefore details how Catholics confronted and engaged novel ideas that called their faith into question and shows how Catholicism, traditionally espoused as a matter of private belief, transformed into a political and public position. It explores how the faithful organized themselves around Catholicism to safeguard both their fate and the fate of their islands, and made religion a key element in civic life, whereby one was either a patriot and a good Catholic or a separatist and a godless individual. The project also reevaluates the development of civil societies in Cuba and Puerto Rico, reinserting Catholicism into a narrative of political struggle that eschews religion in favor of political philosophies and intellectual movements understood as modern at the time, and proposes that the expansion of these civil societies was achieved alongside, rather than in spite of, discussions about the centrality of Catholicism and its practices.

This study is a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with thirty-two couples who have been married for eight years. Although the couples in this sample have similar religious, economic, and cultural backgrounds, the quality of each marriage is quite different. Ten couples have exceptionally high-quality marriages, eighteen have average-quality marriages, three are struggling, and one couple has been divorced. The purpose of this study was to better understand what the ten couples with high-quality marriages are doing to create successful relationships. I conclude that high-quality marriages are created by a couple's participation in a particular process with a specific paradigm that facilitates a critical characteristic. I also postulate that high-quality marriages are undergirded by three guiding principles. A couple's environment, circumstance, and parental role models constitute the framework from which marital decisions spring, but for the respondents in this study, contextual issues by themselves neither explained nor were consistently associated with marital quality. The ten couples with the best marriages participate in a process of covenanting, communicating, and complying to heartfelt marital obligations. They tend to function most consistently from an other-centered paradigm, and have the characteristic of love as the trademark of their relationships. High-quality marriages are governed by three principles: they are mutually created, require constant nurturing, and are dynamic. This process, paradigm, and characteristic constitute three important dimensions of high-quality marital relationships. If both couples are making choices from within this imaginary three-dimensional sphere or realm, the result is a high-quality marriage. If one spouse makes choices from within this imaginary sphere while the other spouse chooses options from outside, the resultant quality tends to be average. When both spouses are consistent in making choices outside this sphere, it constitutes the foundation of a low-quality marriage.

Building on previous work on racial attitudes among the religious, this study reassesses the effects of religion on individuals’ beliefs about racial inequality. This study relies on recent developments in the sociology of culture, which conceives of culture as a frame through which individuals interpret the world in which they inhabit (Benford and Snow 2000; Harding 2007; Small 2002, 2004). Religion is held to be an important social institution that provides substance to the frames that individuals employ for interpreting racial inequality. Two particular developments from this literature inform this study: first, that individuals can employ different, even contradictory, frames simultaneously, and second, that frames are dynamic processes that can change over time. This study utilizes the General Social Survey from 1985 to 2008 and uses a theoretically informed and improved methodology for assessing beliefs about racial inequality. Three conclusions are drawn: 1) religion continues to play a role in shaping individuals’ beliefs about racial inequality, 2) it is important to differentiate between “pure” frames and frames that combine different explanations for racial inequality when understanding the role of religion in forming beliefs about black-white inequality, and 3) frames for racial inequality undergo change over time, though the pattern of change depends upon the frame for racial inequality.