This dissertation presents a quantitative analysis of religious commitment among U.S. adults who were polled in nationally representative surveys between 1984 and 2010. The three studies presented in this dissertation investigate two key research questions. First, are people in the United States more religiously committed, on average, when they live in geographic areas (e.g., counties and cities) where local indicators of human development such as life expectancy, education and income are relatively low? Prior research has found a robust cross-national relationship between human development and religiosity, but little evidence has been presented that suggests the same relationship exists at the level of subnational geographies. Second, if such a relationship exists, are the reasons for the statistical link between human development and religiosity attributable to the theoretical explanations in the extant literature? Are people living in poverty and poor health more likely to be religious because they fear for their security? The results presented in this dissertation suggest, first, that a strong and robust association exists between the levels of human development in U.S. counties and cities and the levels of religious commitment reported by survey respondents who lived in those areas. On average, U.S. adults tended to self-identify with a religious group, report strong affiliation with their religious group, pray more frequently, attend religious services more regularly and hold more supernaturalistic religious views when they lived in geographic areas with relatively low levels of human development. Second, there is little evidence for the explanatory chain predicted by the literature. Individual-level measures of psychological distress do not mediate the relationship between human development and religious commitment as the existential insecurity literature would expect. Instead, what this dissertation finds is that the effect of human development on individual level religiosity seems to be mediated mostly by aggregate-level insecurity rather than individual-level insecurity.

In this study, I conducted ethnographic participant observations and semi-structured interviews at two evangelical congregations in central Florida, Free Baptist Church (FBC) and Cornerstone Church (CC), to explore how Christian nationalist ideas (CN) are negotiated, embraced, and/or rejected in church messaging and among congregants. I collected notes from eight sermons at each church and interviewed a total of 14 congregants regarding their concerns and lived experiences as Christians in the U.S. and their opinions on racial injustice. Expanding on previous research on CN, I incorporated Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an analytical framework to understand CN as inextricably connected to White evangelicalism, White supremacy, settler colonialism, and other systems of oppression. According to my findings, both FBC and CC operated as White heteropatriarchal institutional spaces being led exclusively by White men and adhering to complementarian doctrine which favors male headship, heteronormative marriage, and the subjugation of women and children to men's authority. The messaging in Sunday sermons at FBC and CC also contributed to the fostering of White, heteropatriarchal hegemonic ideals among congregants. Main themes included topics like boundary-making, the spiritual warfare, transcendence of social problems through a future global Christian Kingdom, "law and order" based on Christian principles, support for border control, and opposition to reproductive rights, affirmation of LGBTQ+ people, and racial justice initiatives such as Black Lives Matter and CRT (particularly among White participants). Ultimately, such messaging contributed to CN views among the majority of congregants I interviewed. This study is significant as it applies a CRT lens to provide a foundation for future research on CN that will extend beyond understanding CN as a distinct cultural framework and point scholars back to the White, heteropatriarchal social structure that sustains it.

This master thesis seeks the relationship between religion and economics in the works of some classics of sociology. The goal of this thesis is to find out if and to what extend religion and economy in these classics influence and relate with each other. From sociologists I focused on Max Weber, Karl Marx, Georg Simmel and Werner Sombart. The first chapter deals with sociology of religion and serves as an introduction to the issue religion in sociology. The second chapter concerns with Max Weber, the third chapter is about Karl Marx, the fourth about Georg Simmel and the fifth about Werner Sombart. The sixth chapter is an overview of other sociologists who deal with sociology of religion and in works of which it would be possible and interesting to search for the connection between religion and economics.

No description available.

The author hopes to emphasize, as Yinger did, the idea of how one is religious rather than simply asking if one is religious. The following research deals with college students and their orientation toward religion. The author will attempt both to define and to show the origin of college students' orientation toward religion.

This dissertation investigates the apostate: those who have given up the beliefs of their birth religion; and apostasy: the process of foregoing said religion. Beyond empirically derived determinants of religious defection often provided by conventional investigations in the sociology of religion, this thesis treats apostasy as a potential signifier of societal change. It attempts to see apostasy as a window for examining the location, of not only apostasy, but of socialisation, religion, and religiosity as constructs of modernity. It provides an investigation beyond a traditional analysis of apostasy as an aberration or problematic rupture in religious socialisation. Rather, apostasy is explored as a potential signifier of resistance to modernistic constructions of socialisation, religion and religiosity. It asks whether, commensurate with an emerging postmodern condition, there has been a transformation in Foucauldian 'technologies of the self' (1988:18) that allows more agency in the negotiation of the self, religion and religiosity. Chapter One introduces and contextualises the argument. It lays the theoretical framework for the thesis and situates the work in the literature. Chapter Two presents the methodology, reviews preliminary statistical findings, and offers the apostasy typology. Chapters Three and Four examine religious socialisation and epistemological orientation of religious disaffiliation. Chapter Five discusses post apostatic re-formations of the self and Chapter Six concludes the thesis with a discussion of the potential need for post apostatic religiosity. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>I denna uppsats utreder jag hur inställningen var till ett förbud mot slöja i de svenska skolorna. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka vilka tankar och inställningar som framkom i Sverige bland skolledningar, politiker och ungdomar med utländskbakgrund under åren 2003 till 2005. Uppsatsen syftar även till att se till vilka eventuella skillnader som finns mellan Sverige och Frankrike, där debatten om slöjan startade redan under slutet av 1980 talet och där man sedan 2004 genom lag har förbjudit slöja i de statliga skolorna.</p><p>Uppsatsen bygger på en hermeneutisk metod och med hjälp av politiska dokument, debattartiklar och forskning om ungdomarnas inställningar till slöjan i de svenska skolorna, har jag genom min textanalys och tolkning nått mitt syfte. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att inställningen för ett förbud mot slöja i skolorna var väldigt svagt i Sverige. Individens frihet betonades mycket, men elevernas situation kom ändå under tidsperioden att ändras genom en ny diskrimineringslag.</p>

I denna uppsats utreder jag hur inställningen var till ett förbud mot slöja i de svenska skolorna. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka vilka tankar och inställningar som framkom i Sverige bland skolledningar, politiker och ungdomar med utländskbakgrund under åren 2003 till 2005. Uppsatsen syftar även till att se till vilka eventuella skillnader som finns mellan Sverige och Frankrike, där debatten om slöjan startade redan under slutet av 1980 talet och där man sedan 2004 genom lag har förbjudit slöja i de statliga skolorna. Uppsatsen bygger på en hermeneutisk metod och med hjälp av politiska dokument, debattartiklar och forskning om ungdomarnas inställningar till slöjan i de svenska skolorna, har jag genom min textanalys och tolkning nått mitt syfte. Resultatet av undersökningen visar att inställningen för ett förbud mot slöja i skolorna var väldigt svagt i Sverige. Individens frihet betonades mycket, men elevernas situation kom ändå under tidsperioden att ändras genom en ny diskrimineringslag.

The main purpose of this dissertation has been to investigate how well diaconal work in seven chosen parishes corresponds to an official definition of the diaconal task of the Church of Sweden as above all to represent and direct activities towards the most disadvantaged and/or marginalised groups in society, a definition that well corresponds to the general expectations of the Swedish people regarding the role of the Church. The empirical ground for the dissertation comes from diaconal inventories built mainly on a comprehensive interview material with parish workers and appointed representatives in the chosen parishes. Diaconal work being carried out has been analysed and discussed in relation to the understanding of diaconal work put forward on the national level as mainly intended for those in greatest need. Analyse is carried out with a point of departure in secularization theory. The apparent dichotomy between public and private religion offer some explanation and enhance the understanding of how religious actors on different levels within the Church organisation have elected to confront the marginalised role of the Church. The most important conclusion generated by this dissertation is a clear lack of correspondence between the understanding of the deaconry as formulated on the national level and diaconal practice in the parishes studied. This discrepancy can arise because actors on the national and local levels have different strategies for counteracting the marginalisation. The gap between the national strategy emphasizing the task of the Church to represent the needy and a diaconal practice expressing quite another strategy represents a concrete and grave dilemma for the Church; a dilemma that in a not too distant future can have serious consequences for the Church’s credibility in the eyes of a distanced, nonreligious public.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.