Evaluating the Moral Framing of Disaffiliation: Sociological and Pastoral Perspectives on the Rise of the “Nones”

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is a very important topic and the author is to be applauded for seeking to find a way between the existing approaches. I appreciated the thorough discussion of the context and the application of a new approach.

The difficulty that I see with the manuscript is a tension between the beginning which points strongly to “moral panic” as an important lens and the ending which backs away from this lens. I think the author needs to reframe the use of moral panic in order to indicate the strengths and weaknesses of its applicability to this particular situation earlier in the paper. One way to do this might be to focus much earlier on Hier’s work as a lens for the kind of application of moral panic that is helpful in these circumstances.

It seems to me that lines 644-646 are at the heart of the author’s argument. I would recommend stating that claim early in the introduction and reframing the piece as a clear response to that statement.

Author Response

Thank you for this advice, and I agree that the moral panic paradigm ultimately does not serve the piece well. I am proceeding to a revision that emphasizes moral regulation and moral entrepreneurship. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper examines several Catholic commentaries on religious disaffiliation, focusing on the moral frameworks, and providing several suggestions for pastoral leaders. The author does a nice job describing recent trends in religious (dis)affiliation and the sociological literature on moral panics. I have several suggestions for improving the author’s general argument and strengthening the author’s overview of religious disaffiliation, though.

Sampling and Methodology

I would describe the current manuscript as more theoretical than empirical, but it is unclear if this was the author’s intent. I think a stronger empirical manuscript needs more description of the sample strategy (i.e., How were commentaries chosen for review? What commentaries were excluded? How do the included commentaries differ from excluded commentaries?) This is necessary to demonstrate the author’s arguments are not an artifact of selective observation.

Similarly, how were the included commentaries analyzed? Did the author follow a specific coding scheme? Did any commentaries challenge the conclusions outlined at the end of this manuscript? Without a clear description of the methodology (again, assuming an intent to support the paper’s primary argument with empirical data), the manuscript becomes an opinion piece with a nice overview of some historic trends/events.

Literature on Religious Disaffiliation

The overview of trends in religious disaffiliation is a strong point of the current manuscript. That said, I think it can be improved by discussing the growing sociological research on the causes and consequences of disaffiliation. Some suggestions include Vargas (2012) on the causes of religious disaffiliation, Manning (2015) on disaffiliation and the religious socialization of children, and Ellison and Lee (2010) and May (2018) on the relationship between disaffiliation and well-being.

References

Ellison, Christopher G., and Jinwoo Lee. 2010. “Spiritual Struggles and Psychological Distress: Is There a Dark Side of Religion?” Social Indicators Research 98(3):501–17. doi: 10.1007/s11205-009-9553-3.

Manning, Christel J. 2015. Losing Our Religion: How Unaffiliated Parents Are Raising Their Children. NYU Press.

May, Matthew. 2018. “Should I Stay or Should I Go? Religious (Dis)Affiliation and Depressive Symptomatology.” Society and Mental Health 8(3):214–30. doi: 10.1177/2156869317748713.

Vargas, Nicholas. 2012. “Retrospective Accounts of Religious Disaffiliation in the United States: Stressors, Skepticism, and Political Factors.” Sociology of Religion 73(2):200–223. doi: 10.1093/socrel/srr044.

 

Author Response

I agree with the reviewer's note that there is confusion as to whether this is a theoretical or empirical argument, and I also agree that it really functions best as a theoretical argument. I realize that the historical presentation of different written sources responding to disaffiliation over the last 30 years had a social history feel that calls out for clarification regarding methodological choices, including samples and coding strategies as the reviewer notes. My revision will propose instead using Barron's work as an example of the moral framing of disafffiliation in a narrower argument analyzing (using less moral paradigm research and more moral regulation research) and troubling that moral framing. I am grateful for the additional sources, some of which I am incorporating.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

My concerns have been addressed.