Challenges and (Dis)continuities in the Debates on Religion on Both Sides of the Atlantic

A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Health/Psychology/Social Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 March 2023) | Viewed by 6905

Special Issue Editors

Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Porto, Via Panorâmica Edgar Cardoso s / n, 4150-564 Porto, Portugal
Interests: religious pluralism; migrations, ethnicity, and religion; new trends in Catholicism and Evangelicalism

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Focusing on the so-called Western countries, we hereby invite you to contribute to highlighting challenges and continuities in the discussion of religion in the modern world. Religion cannot be separated from the other contexts or the socio-cultural system in which we grow up, which nourishes us daily through old and new media.

While religion is present in the lives of people and, surprisingly, beyond the theory of secularization amongst many young people, its forms, livelihood, and adaptations to modernity, local and/or transnational communities, families, and individual experiences are influenced by daily-life experiences, as well as unexpected variables, such as COVID-19. The pandemic has provided an important perspective for observing the role of religion in the tension or discourse between biopolitical measures of governments and the perceptions of individual freedom. From the perspective of praxis, a large part of religious groups explore the limits of their institutional elasticity, in order to recompose their practices in a network of information and sociability in the digital ecosystem. The real impact of the pandemic on the lives of religious communities was diverse, affecting transnational migration, as well as multicultural and global connections.

Beyond the specificities of each local context in which the debate on religion and the different aspects of religiosity develops, similarities can be traced in the Western context and from both two sides of the Atlantic. The growth in the number of those who define themselves as atheists; the return to the forefront of the central actor of religious associationism; the role of religious organizations at the local level; the various and numerous forms of 'religiosity a la carte'; the discontinuities in the intergenerational religious transmission; and the renewed link between religion and well-being are some of the themes that this Special Issue intends to discuss. Clearly, for several reasons, religion becomes a potent synecdoche for explaining socio-cultural and political events without taking anything else into account. Is it important to articulate and integrate different motivations to understand and better scrutinize what is currently developing in the wider field of religious and spiritual studies.

The agenda of interests linked to the study of the sociology of religion is therefore wide and very articulated, aiming to explore new themes without neglecting the classic areas of investigation and following the dimensions of religiosity, such as belief, belonging, practice, experience, knowledge (Glock and Stark 1965), and the new role of the previous state churches or historical churches. These themes make it possible to investigate how the relationship with the sacred intervenes in orienting the everyday life and actions of citizens in many areas: from politics to bioethical choices; from values to economic choices; and from the relationship with institutions to the numerous and autonomous forms of spirituality, in addition to the emergence of the phenomena of "belief without belonging" and "belonging without belief" (referring to those who declare some religious affiliation more for reasons of ethnic-national identity than of faith). Among the many topics of interest, the issue of religious pluralism and religious freedom requires a closer look. While respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, even in the field of religion, the outcome is a nation-based legal system, where the complex systems of relations between the State and Church (and other religious institutions) retain their strength. Western history reveals, in different moments and geographical contexts, that whenever laws were made about religious freedoms, they never led to an initiative for change, but rather represented an imperative to respond to events (Bruce and Wright, 1995: 104), some of which were unexpected. As a result, social cohesion was no longer associated with the imperative of religious consensus.

If, in the past, Christian churches were moral references on both sides of the Atlantic concerning bioethical issues, today, they are no longer moral references on these issues and, it is not uncommon to observe internal divisions or an increase in diversity within many religious denominations.

The result is indeed a heterogeneous situation, with experiences of welcome or latent discrimination, protection, or evaluation on a case-by-case basis, to be found in the various European countries (Soper and Fetzer 2005).

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Religious identities;
  • Religious behavior;
  • Legal religious framework;
  • Continuities and discontinuities within religious denominations;
  • Religious transmission and religious communication ;
  • Daily life religion;
  • Migrations and religion;
  • The crisis of the historical Churches;
  • Conflict, negotiation and assimilation between religion and politics on ethical issues;
  • Religious communities in the media: the global dimension.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Helena Vilaça
Dr. Roberta Ricucci
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

20 pages, 254 KiB  
Article
Internal Secularisation at the Festival of Saint Rosalia
by Rossana M. Salerno
Religions 2024, 15(1), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010126 - 18 Jan 2024
Viewed by 830
Abstract
The dynamic relationship that exists between a religious rite and its territory is interpreted and analysed by religious anthropology as a form of protection, offered by the sacred to the place in which it resides. According to this interpretation, passage through the territory [...] Read more.
The dynamic relationship that exists between a religious rite and its territory is interpreted and analysed by religious anthropology as a form of protection, offered by the sacred to the place in which it resides. According to this interpretation, passage through the territory of what is reputed to be sacred or even its very presence as a sanctuary, drives evil away and is believed to perform a generally stable protective function. Within such a dynamic, the rite that actually creates this sacred passage, i.e., the procession of relics, lays the foundations for an analysis of the two specific variables that are, in actual fact, intwined: on the one side is the rite, and on the other, the territory. Such a relationship appears all the more problematic due to the progressive rationalisation of the religious dimension, extensively dealt with by Max Weber (Weber 1920) and accepted by contemporary sociology on religion, as it is now a supernatural phenomenon that is only considered to have a representational dimension. The internal secularization at the festival of Saint Rosalia happened in 2023, with the landing of the triumphal cart in New York. The rite moves to another new territory and transforms it. The cart of Saint Rosalia, preserved in the Columbus Citizens Foundation in New York, represents the identity of Sicilian immigrants but also a new form of ritualization on a new territory through an “ancient” ritual. When the sacred is located within the institutional dimension of a salvation religion presided over by an institution, it appears separate from any purely mechanical (and therefore magical) dimension, while the territory becomes a variable in which a multiplicity of factors are contained. These factors not only give importance to the very aspects of the ritual itself, boosting its civil and secular parts, but also to the religious programme, which undergoes unexpected transformations introduced by the presiding institution. The main object of this analysis is, therefore, to establish an interactive path whereby, on the one hand, the territory, through its various cultural components (both secular and religious), shapes the religious rite and how it places restrictions on those protective functions, while on the other, how the rite places its own constraints on the cultural transformations that take place in the fabric of society. Full article
13 pages, 247 KiB  
Article
Teaching a Biblical Text among African Christian and Muslim Asylum-Seeker Children in Israel
by Dolly Eliyahu-Levi and Michal Ganz-Meishar
Religions 2023, 14(4), 537; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040537 - 17 Apr 2023
Viewed by 1148
Abstract
Educators in Israel face significant school diversity while struggling to adequately respond to the unique needs of diverse national and cultural communities and students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Bible teachers in elementary school face tensions and conflicts between the religious concepts and beliefs [...] Read more.
Educators in Israel face significant school diversity while struggling to adequately respond to the unique needs of diverse national and cultural communities and students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Bible teachers in elementary school face tensions and conflicts between the religious concepts and beliefs of the parents and the children and the accepted concepts in Israeli Jewish society. This qualitative study was conducted among fifteen teachers working in elementary schools in the country’s center where students from national, religious, social, and social–cultural populations attend, including children from families of asylum seekers. The findings revealed two central tensions: (1) emotional religious tension and (2) pedagogical tension. It was found that Bible teachers play the role of social–religious mediators in Israeli society. In the context of religious tension, teachers find themselves in situations of uncertainty, without the pedagogical skills to help them bridge the gaps and soften the strain. As a result, they are passive and remain silent. On the other hand, in the context of pedagogical tension, the teachers try to take the initiative, go beyond the boundaries of the familiar and known, and try to adapt classroom activities to the culture of the country of origin and the everyday social contexts. Full article
25 pages, 425 KiB  
Article
Religion and Cultural Mediations: Perspectives from Contemporary Portuguese Society
by Alfredo Teixeira
Religions 2023, 14(4), 534; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040534 - 16 Apr 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1709
Abstract
The article reviews the concept of “cultural religion”, pursuing its different modulations. The limits of the idea oscillate between its interpretation as a form of obsolescence of religion in secularized societies and the possibility that it is a specific modality of religious identification. [...] Read more.
The article reviews the concept of “cultural religion”, pursuing its different modulations. The limits of the idea oscillate between its interpretation as a form of obsolescence of religion in secularized societies and the possibility that it is a specific modality of religious identification. However, this theoretical construct does not sufficiently incorporate a focus on the processes of cultural transmission in complex societies. From the notion of “cultural mediation (medium)”, an observation framework of contemporary Portuguese society is attempted in order to identify the structuring dimensions that facilitate the mobilization of religious memory in different logics of action. Full article
11 pages, 271 KiB  
Article
Why Are Conservative Young Evangelicals in Norway Avoiding Right-Wing Politics?
by Roald Zeiffert
Religions 2023, 14(4), 520; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14040520 - 10 Apr 2023
Viewed by 2353
Abstract
Drawing on new survey data, this article elaborates on how young evangelicals in Norway navigate between a secular majority and evangelical subgroups. It shows how they combine pro-fertility norms with liberal attitudes towards migration. Explaining why they avoid both left- and right-wing politics, [...] Read more.
Drawing on new survey data, this article elaborates on how young evangelicals in Norway navigate between a secular majority and evangelical subgroups. It shows how they combine pro-fertility norms with liberal attitudes towards migration. Explaining why they avoid both left- and right-wing politics, the article elaborates on the central role the Christian Democratic party plays for young evangelicals in Norway. Full article
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