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For the Wrath of God: Fatalism and Images of God in Violent Regions of the World
Abstract
Research has found that individuals use religion to understand one’s fate in life, which in turn impacts health outcomes. This may be particularly relevant in high conflict/violent regions of the world, where religious beliefs may b e a particular important means to cope with one’s future in the wake of violence, instabil
ity, and uncertainty. In this paper, we examine the role of images of God in predicting level of fatalism among individuals in the high conflict region of the South Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia)
utilizing data from the 2012 Caucasus Barometer. We find that conceptions of God as judgmental prove to be the only consistent, religious predictor of fatalism across the three nations.
... Indeed, several studies have found a relationship between conceptions of God and beliefs about same-sex unions (Whitehead 2014), abortion (Unnever, Bartkowski, and Cullen 2010), and punitive attitudes toward criminals Unnever, Bartkowski, and Cullen 2010). In the wake of such research, scholars have called for the increased usage of images of God as a measure of religiosity, particularly in cross-cultural contexts (Bader and Finke 2010;Bader et al. 2017;Finke and Bader 2017). In their examination of fatalistic attitudes across Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, Bader et al. (2017) find a judgmental conception of God to be the only religion measure to have a consistent and significant effect. ...
... In the wake of such research, scholars have called for the increased usage of images of God as a measure of religiosity, particularly in cross-cultural contexts (Bader and Finke 2010;Bader et al. 2017;Finke and Bader 2017). In their examination of fatalistic attitudes across Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, Bader et al. (2017) find a judgmental conception of God to be the only religion measure to have a consistent and significant effect. This leads the authors to strongly advocate for survey researchers to "consider adding measures of images of God to surveys . . . to encourage cross-cultural research on the effects of religious belief" (Bader et al. 2017: 188). ...
... What is clear from the existing research is that any item that simply indicates whether the individual believes in God is of very little utility by itself. As Bader et al. (2017) note, more than 90% of those in the South Caucasus region report believing in God. Froese and Bader (2015) similarly argue that it is not belief in God that is important, but rather differences in opinion about God's nature and character. ...
Previous research suggests that religious service attendance, biblical literalism, images of God, and other measures of religion are related to moral beliefs (i.e., that certain behaviors are wrong or deviant). Given previous theory and research on spiritual appraisals (particularly demonization and desecration), we argue that belief in Satan should also predict moral beliefs. Using the first four waves of the Baylor Religion Survey, we tested the association between belief in Satan and belief in the wrongfulness of twelve different behaviors related to abortion, family matters, sexuality, and substance use. Although religious service attendance and biblical literalism were consistently related to moral beliefs, belief in Satan was significantly related to six of the twelve moral beliefs. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction effect between religious service attendance and belief in Satan for ten of the twelve moral beliefs, suggesting that religious service attendance has little or no effect on moral beliefs when people do not also believe in Satan.
... While not particularly large, there is a body of sociological research on how people conceptualize god 1 (Bader et al., 2017;Deguara, 2018;Nelsen et al., 1985;Shah et al., 2016;Whitehead, 2012Whitehead, , 2014. Most of this research focuses on Judeo-Christian conceptualizations of God within the United States and draws upon implicitly cisgender samples. ...
A growing body of research has begun to explore the religious and spiritual lives of transgender and nonbinary individuals. Missing from prior sociological research on this topic is how individuals outside the gender binary conceptualize the gender of god(s) and their own genders in the afterlife. Using data from a targeted survey of members of transgender listservs and online activist groups, this study explores two specific religious/spiritual beliefs of transgender and nonbinary individuals in comparison to cisgender individuals: (1) their conception of God’s/gods’ gender(s) and (2) their conception of their own gender in the afterlife. Many trans and nonbinary participants report both their future gender and the gender of any god(s) in which they believe as nonbinary, but not exclusively.
... The current study contributes to this literature by theorizing and testing one possible mechanism-God's or a higher power's ability to supervise or be actively involved in human affairs. While past research examined the relationship between images of God and a variety of attitudes and behaviors (Bader et al. 2017; Bader 2007, 2008;Greeley 1988Greeley , 1989Greeley , 1991Greeley , 1993Henderson, Fitz, and Mencken 2017;Jang et al. 2018;Maynard et al. 2001;Unnever et al. 2005Unnever et al. , 2006, it failed to examine the potential influence of particular images of God on vaccine attitudes or science more broadly (see Upenieks et al. (2021) for an exception). We find that God or a higher power's ability to intervene in the world is significantly and negatively associated with the odds of COVID-19 vaccine uptake and having received or planning to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. ...
Background:
Vaccines represent one of the best ways to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. However, vaccine hesitancy among the population limits the effectiveness of vaccines. Recent research has explored the role of religion in vaccine hesitancy, but in doing so has encountered a "black box" problem. There is a relationship between religion and vaccine hesitancy, but the explanation for why remains unclear.
Purpose:
The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between religion and vaccine hesitancy. We propose that how an individual conceptualizes God/a higher power is associated with getting vaccinated for COVID-19.
Methods:
We use data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults, collected using the Amerispeak® probability-based panel via the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. We examine the association between individuals' views of God/a higher power as both a supervisory and an intervening figure on vaccine uptake and likelihood of getting vaccinated through logistic regressions.
Results:
We find that belief in God's/a higher power's supervision is not significantly associated with the odds of COVID-19 vaccine uptake or vaccination intent. However, belief in God's/a higher power's ability to intervene in the world is significantly and negatively associated with the odds of COVID-19 vaccine uptake and the odds of having received or planning to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. In addition, in models where belief in the ability of God/a higher power to intervene are included, Christian nationalism ceases to have a statistically significant association with intent to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
Conclusions and implications:
These findings suggest that how individuals conceptualize God/a higher power is associated with their willingness to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Given this, those who see God/a higher power as more involved in the world may contribute to delays in achieving herd immunity. This information benefits those working on vaccination campaigns in understanding the beliefs of some of those who are most hesitant to get vaccinated. In addition, this intervention mechanism could also mediate other negative relationships between religion and other science and health-related concerns.
... This perspective is limited and does not appear to be useful to the study of the League. The second approach considers religion as an external factor, a cause or explanation of nationalism by specifying the ways in which particular forms of religion contribute to shape different forms of nationalism (Bader et al. 2017; Van der Veer and Lehmann 1999). However, this perspective is not very helpful in understanding the League. ...
... This perspective is limited and does not appear to be useful to the study of the League. The second approach considers religion as an external factor, a cause or explanation of nationalism by specifying the ways in which particular forms of religion contribute to shape different forms of nationalism (Bader et al. 2017; Van der Veer and Lehmann 1999). However, this perspective is not very helpful in understanding the League. ...
This contribution offers new directions to explore how implicitly religious customs and norms may influence voting for right-wing populist parties. It also suggests an indirect influence of government regulation of religion on the rise of populism in the European Union. The church–state relationship is viewed as providing a stable context for religious biases to emerge, thereby enabling populist forces to capitalise on a sense of loss of national identity which in turn reinforces citizens’ negative attitude towards immigrants, particularly of different religious backgrounds. Combining the Religion and State Project Round 3 (RAS3) dataset with electoral and socio-demographic data, this contribution presents time-series analyses and linear regression in order to explore the impact of religious factors on populist voting patterns and support for the Italian Eurosceptic populist movement, the League, between 1992 and 2014. I argue that the success of this populist party lies in its ability to use an adaptive mythology that plays on pre-existing religious norms to stoke fears of a decline of cultural homogeneity and a loss of political and economic power.
Multiple-item indexes are ubiquitous within the sociology of religion. However, there are a growing number of articles in other disciplines that have advocated the use of single-item measures in specific circumstances. Using quantitative survey data taken from the United Kingdom, this paper contributes to this literature by exploring the impact of single and multiple item measures of religious evil on a series of social and political attitudes. The findings suggest that belief in the devil is the most consistent predictor within a multiple-item measure of religious evil and the multiple-item measure does not significantly outperform single-item measures. Indeed, the item “most evil in the world is caused by the devil” could be a more efficient measure of religious evil, particularly where it is combined with religious attendance. While further cross-cultural research on the impact of belief in religious evil remains necessary, the paper also finds some evidence to suggest that exploration of more secular beliefs in evil might be advantageous.
Images of God are the most consequential religious beliefs known to social science. Although sociologists have identified a wide and diverse range of outcomes of imagining different versions of God, more work is needed to show how these outcomes fit together within a multistep theoretical framework. To lay groundwork for such a theory, the present paper (a) briefly summarizes major theoretical perspectives on sources and outcomes of images of God, from psychology, social psychology, and sociology; (b) reviews a wide range of studies that identify specific outcomes of different images of God; and (c) recommends a new theoretical direction based on (a) and (b). Although this new direction will need to be developed in substantially greater detail in another context, the starting point for such work, suggested here, is that images of God function as humans' preeminent sacred symbols. This insight helps bridge an unnecessary chasm between Durkheim's theory of ritual and Stark's theory of gods.
Is the belief in divine control associated with the generalized sense of personal control? Using data from a 2005 nationally representative survey of 1,800 adults in the United States, I test two competing views: the relinquished control versus the personal empowerment hypotheses. Results support the relinquished control hypothesis. Individuals who believe in divine control tend to report significantly lower levels of personal control - but that association is contingent upon other dimensions of the religious role. Specifically, I observe a significantly stronger negative association between belief in divine control and personal control among individuals who report lower levels of subjective religiosity and less frequent praying and attendance activities. Moreover, the interrelationships among these four dimensions of the religious role reveal important suppression effects in their influence on personal control. I discuss the ways that these observations contribute to theoretical views about the complex interactions among religious precepts, practices, and generalized expectancies of personal control.
This study employs the exchange and phenomenological perspectives in social theory to develop an empirical and analytical account of the relationship between religious commitment and parental adjustment following childhood death. This was accomplished in two ways: 1) by exploring the influence of religious commitment on bereavement adjustment as well as changes in commitment resulting from religion's effectiveness as a source of comfort; and 2) by examining the nature and effectiveness of theodicies constructed by parents to explain their child's death. In-depth interviews and questionnaires were used to gather data from 145 parents of children, treated for cancer or blood disorders at a large urban pediatric hospital, who died during 1975-79. Results showed that religious commitment is both cause and consequence of adjustment to bereavement in that religion can serve as a source of compensation for the loss of a child. Moreover, the analysis revealed the existence of three specific types of bereavement theodicies: 1) reunion with the child in an afterlife; 2) the child's death as serving a noble purpose; and 3) the death as a punishment for parental wrong-doing. The implications of these results for understanding the role of religion in the mourning process are discussed.
Despite at least a century of theoretical debate, the rehtionship between religion and the sense of control has rarely been investigated empirically. This study develops a series of theoretical arguments linking multiple dimensions of religious involvement with the sense of control. Relevant hypotheses are then tested using data from the 1996 NORC General Social Survey. On the one hand, several aspects of religious involvement (attendance at services, belief in an afterlife, conservative Protestant affiliation) are positively associated with the sense of control. In addition, afterlife belief and frequency of prayer moderate the links between health problems and the sense of control. However, consistent with the ctaims of prominent critics, certain religious beliefs (e.g., human sin, biblical literalism) are inversely related to the sense of control.
Few public policy issues have inflamed passions as consistently and as strongly as the debate over capital punishment. Religious denominations have been deeply involved on both sides of the issue, drawing both on teachings and traditions of justice and on those that emphasize the dignity of human life. Scholarly researchers have investigated the role that religious beliefs play in shaping sentiments toward crime control policies, with a particular focus on the relationship between belonging to a Christian fundamentalist denomination and support for the death penalty. Researchers have reasoned that Christian fundamentalists should be more likely to support capital punishment than other more moderate denominations because they hold conservative religious beliefs that justify the use of the death penalty. Using 1998 data from the General Social Survey, the authors initially show that contrary to common views, Christian fundamentalist affiliation is unrelated to support for capital punishment. Subsequent analyses reveal, however, that this null relationship is not straightforward but complex: fundamentalists embrace certain religious beliefs and involvement that both increase and decrease punitiveness. The study thus suggests that understanding the impact of religion on crime control attitudes potentially requires disentangling countervailing effects of different features of religiosity.
Although prior studies have documented a positive association between religiosity and sense of meaning in life, the role of specific religious beliefs is currently unclear. Past research on images of God suggests that loving images of God will positively correlate with a sense of meaning and purpose. Mechanisms for this hypothesized relationship are drawn from prior work on attachment theory, religious coping, and symbolic interaction. We suggest that these mechanisms are complementary and that secure attachment styles, reliable coping strategies, and positive self-images work in tandem to facilitate a sense of meaning and purpose. Using a random, national sample from the second wave of the Baylor Religion Survey, we perform multivariate regression analysis that controls for key religious and demographic effects. In our full model, results indicate that the dependent variable is positively associated with student status, religious non-affiliation, congregational friendship networks, and frequency of prayer. Most important from the perspective of the present study, the connection between loving images of God and a sense of meaning and purpose is consistent and robust.
Using data from a 2005 nationally representative survey of working adults residing in the United States, we show that education
is associated positively with a sense of personal control. The well-educated have higher status occupations which include
higher levels of schedule control, challenging, interesting and enriching work, greater economic rewards and security, and
a higher level of trust. Collectively, these patterns contribute substantially to the association between education and sense
of control. We also observe that demanding work has a negative effect on sense of control, but this emerges only after adjusting
for other higher status work conditions that correspond with demands. Our observations inform the integration of theoretical
perspectives to describe education's benefits for personal and social functioning.
Religion has long been recognized as an underlying aspect of correctional policies. Researchers, however, have only recently begun to move beyond considerations of how fundamentalist Christian affiliations might shape preferences for punitive correctional policies. The present study broadens the extant research by examining multiple aspects of religious beliefs and how they affect support for capital punishment and harsher local courts. Analyses of General Social Survey data show that religion has divergent effects. Beyond a mere fundamentalist or conservative religious view, those who have a rigid and moralistic approach to religion and who imagine God as a dispassionate, powerful figure who dispenses justice are more likely to harbor punitive sentiments toward offenders. In contrast, those who have a gracious or loving image of God and who are compassionate toward others—that is, those who take seriously the admonition to “turn the other cheek”—are less supportive of “get tough” policies. In the end, not only is religion a multi‐dimensional phenomenon but also its features likely coalesce to divide believers into opposite camps—with one set of attributes fostering harsh sentiments toward offenders and another set of attributes tempering punitiveness and justifying interventions aimed at helping the criminally wayward.
Social scientists often explain religious effects in terms of religious group affiliations. Typically, researchers identify religious groups by denomination or some broader popular categorization, such as “fundamentalist” or “evangelical.” To capture religious differences more effectively, Steensland et al. (2000) propose an intricate classification of American denominations that takes into account the theology and historical development of various American religious traditions to predict individual attitudes and behaviors. We believe that equal care and attention should be devoted to the development of key measures of belief that may cross denominational lines. In this article, we propose one such measure: personal conceptions or images of God. Our simple measure of conceptions of God predicts church attendance rates, belief in biblical literalism, political party identification, attitudes toward abortion, and attitudes about sexual morality. In addition, this indicator provides a means to understand variation within religious traditions. Views of God’s character provide a straightforward way to describe religious differences and an efficient means to demonstrate how religion affects the world.
Ever since Stouffer (1955) began to measure political tolerance a half century ago, multiple studies have shown that church
attendance and denominational affiliation play a significant role in influencing whether individuals want to extend civil
liberties to fringe groups. However, there is little theoretical understanding of why religion should affect an individual's
unwillingness to grant free expression to minority opinions. Drawing upon the theoretical innovations of Greeley (1995) we
argue that the key to understanding when religion negatively affects political tolerance is the individual's conception of
God. Using data from the General Social Survey we find that a wrathful image of God is significantly related to the denial
of civil liberties to unpopular groups, even controlling for attendance, affiliation and view of the Bible. These findings
indicate that religious faith and civil liberties are in tension mainly when believers think that God actively punishes sinners.
Christian undergraduate students generated causal attributions by which religious people may explain God's involvement in the outcome of situations. These attributions were rated by 187 other undergraduates along dimensions of locus (located in person, God, or environment); controllability (controlled by person, God, or environment); and stability. Factor analyses suggested that (a) God attributions were of 4 types: God's Will-God's Activity, Person Acts-God Responds, Social Environment Acts-God Responds, and Luck; and (b) people tended to rate locus and controllability similarly. Participants' tendencies to make different types of attributions were related to their intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity. Implications for other work in attributions to God are discussed.
This article explores how religion, as a meaning system, influences coping with adversity. First, a model emphasizing the role of meaning making in coping is presented. Next, religion as a meaning system is defined, and theory and research on the role of religion in the coping process are summarized. Results from the author's study of 169 bereaved college students are then presented to illustrate some of the pathways through which religious meaning can influence the coping process in making meaning following loss. Findings indicate that associations between religion and adjustment vary across time since loss, and that these associations are mediated by meaning-making coping. Finally, implications for individual and societal well-being and suggestions for future research are discussed.
The authors reviewed 94 studies published in journals since 1980 on religion and marital or parental functioning. Meta-analytic techniques were used to quantify religion-family associations examined in at least 3 studies. Greater religiousness appeared to decrease the risk of divorce and facilitate marital functioning, but the effects were small. Greater Christian conservatism was modestly associated with greater endorsement and use of corporal punishment with preadolescents. Isolated findings suggested that greater parental religiousness relates to more positive parenting and better child adjustment. The scope, meaningfulness, and potential strength of findings were restricted because of reliance on global or single-item measures of religious and family domains. To facilitate more conceptually and methodologically sophisticated research, the authors delineated mechanisms by which the substantive and psychosocial elements of religion could benefit or harm family adjustment.
Students struggling to find information on the modern lives of those living in Eurasia need not look any farther! Written for high school and undergraduate students, Culture and Customs of the Caucasus fills a major void on library shelves. This unique reference work explores contemporary life in three former Soviet Union republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. No other reference book offers such exhaustive material on the traditions and customs of all three nations. Students studying world culture, social studies, and multicultural issues can use this engaging and comprehensive volume to learn about the Caucasus's history, urban life, religion, literature, cuisine, holidays, and leisure activities, among many other topics.
In the early 1990's, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia emerged from the grip of the Soviet Union and stood on their own for the first time in almost a century. Today, these three nations are slowly emerging from communism's dark cloud, thriving culturally and gaining strength economically. Written for high-school students, Culture and Customs of the Caucasus is the ultimate one-stop reference source that explores the three countries in the region-no other reference work provides such comprehensive and current material. Students studying world culture, social studies, and multicultural issues can use this engaging and wide-ranging volume to learn about the Caucasus's history, urban life, religion, literature, cuisine, holidays, and leisure activities, among many other topics.
This book delves into the extent of government involvement in religion between 1990 and 2002 using both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The study is based on the Religion and State dataset, which includes 175 governments across the globe, all of which are addressed individually in this book. The forms of involvement examined in this study include whether the government has an official religion, whether some religions are given preferential treatment, religious discrimination against minority religion, government regulation of the majority religion, and religious legislation. The study shows that government involvement in religion is ubiquitous, that it increased significantly during this period, and that only a minority of states, including a minority of democracies, have separation of religion and state. These findings contradict the predictions of religion’s reduced public significance found in modernization and secularization theory. The findings also demonstrate that state religious monopolies are linked to reduced religious participation.
1. The Belief in a Just World.- 2. The First Experiment: The Effect of Fortuitous Reward.- 3. The Second Experiment: Observers' Reactions to the "Innocent Victim".- 4. The Third Experiment: The Martyred and Innocent Victims.- 5. Three Experiments That Assess the Effects of Sex and Educational Background of Observers, Experimenter and Observer Influence on One Another, and the Reactions of "Informed" and Nonimplicated Observers.- 6. Reactions to the Belief in a Just World Theory and Findings: The "Nay-Sayers".- 7. Condemning the Victimized.- 8. The Assignment of Blame.- 9. The Response to Victimization: Extreme Tests of the Belief in a Just World.- 10. Who Believes in a Just World: Dimension or Style.- 11. Deserving versus Justice.- References.
In this paper, the Multivariate Belief-Motivation Theory of Religiousness is presented. This theory integrates the religious domains of motivation, belief, and problem-solving style within one framework for the prediction of psychological adjustment. Religious problem-solving style is incorporated in a mediating role. Motivation, belief, and problem-solving style are operationalized respectively in terms of intrinsic/extrinsic religiousness, concept of God, and religious coping style. Trait anxiety is used as the criterion variable. The theory was evaluated for 161 students attending four Christian Protestant colleges. The results supported the necessity of differentiating religiousness into both motivation and belief in order to predict and understand religious coping style and anxiety. Religious problem-solving style mediated the relationship between belief and anxiety. However, both motivation and problem-solving style contributed unique portions of the variance in anxiety, which suggested that motivation was not entirely mediated by problem-solving style.
A cognitive consistency framework was adopted to predict that a believer's level of self-esteem and his location on the locus of control dimension influence his description and definition of God. On a sample of 128 Catholic subjects with approximately identical religious backgrounds, self-esteem was positively related to loving-accepting God-images and negatively to rejecting images. Locus of control was unrelated to controlling beliefs. Statistical and methodological controls were utilized to offer an interpretation that self-esteem may be a major determinant of God-images. It was proposed that these findings have important implications for understanding the dynamics of personal religion.
Health-related situations pose a particular challenge to the need to find justice, meaning and control in life. This study points to the rich and varied ways that attributions to God are integrated into attempts to maintain meaningful views of the world and to cope with the world. A sample of 124 undergraduates was presented with four health-related situations depicting responsible or irresponsible behavior followed by a positive or negative outcome. They then responded to causal and coping attribution items. As predicted, attributions to God's will, God's love and God's anger were greater in noncontingent/unjust, positive outcome, and negative outcome situations respectively. Attributions to God's will appeared to represent a benign, external, alternative explanation to chance attributions. The results also support the view that people turn to God for help in coping more commonly as a source of support during stress than as a moral guide or as an antidote to an unjust world. Generally, these findings underscore the need for further integration of religious concepts into the general attribution and coping literatures.
The positive association between education and health is well established, but explanations for this association are not. Our explanations fall into three categories: (1) work and economic conditions, (2) social-psychological resources, and (3) health lifestyle. We replicate analyses with two samples, cross-sectionally and over time, using two health measures (self-reported health and physical functioning). The first data set comes from a national probability sample of U.S. households in which respondents were interviewed by telephone in 1990 (2,031 respondents, ages 18 to 90). The second data set comes from a national probability sample of U.S. households in which respondents ages 20 to 64 were interviewed by telephone first in 1979 (3,025 respondents), and then again in 1980 (2,436 respondents). Results demonstrate a positive association between education and health and help explain why the association exists. (1) Compared to the poorly educated, well educated respondents are less likely to be unemployed, are more likely to work full-time, to have fulfilling, subjectively rewarding jobs, high incomes, and low economic hardship. Full-time work, fulfilling work, high income, and low economic hardship in turn significantly improve health in all analyses. (2) The well educated report a greater sense of control over their lives and their health, and they have higher levels of social support. The sense of control, and to a lesser extent support, are associated with good health. (3) The well educated are less likely to smoke, are more likely to exercise, to get health check-ups, and to drink moderately, all of which, except check-ups, are associated with good health. We conclude that high educational attainment improves health directly, and it improves health indirectly through work and economic conditions, social-psychological resources, and health lifestyle.
A theory of trust is developed and tested. The theory posits that mistrust develops in neighborhoods where resources are scarce and threat is common, and among individuals with few resources and who feel powerless to avoid or manage the threat. Perceived neighborhood disorder, common in disadvantaged neighborhoods where disadvantaged individuals live, influences mistrust directly and indirectly by increasing residents' perceptions of powerlessness which in turn amplify disorder's effect on mistrust. The hypotheses are examined using the Community, Crime, and Health data, a 1995 survey of a representative sample of 2,482 Illinois residents with linked data on neighborhoods. Net of individual disadvantage, residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods have low levels of trust as a result of high levels of disorder in their neighborhoods: People who report living in neighborhoods with high levels of crime, vandalism, graffiti, danger, noise, and drugs are more mistrusting. The sense of powerlessness, which is common in such neighborhoods, amplifies the effect of neighborhood disorder on mistrust.
Efforts to explain regional variations in rates of violent crime have frequently cited the southern subculture of violence
thesis. However, the evidence for the existence of such a subculture has been inconclusive. This study investigates regional
differences in the levels and determinants of support for interpersonal violence under defensive or retaliatory circumstances.
Using data from the 1983 General Social Survey, this research finds that native southerners are disproportionately inclined
to condone defensive or retaliatory forms of violence. There is evidence that the public religious culture of the South may
play a significant role in legitimizing these types of violence. Some results are consistent with arguments that interregional
migration and cohort substitution are attenuating regional differences in views regarding violence. Several directions for
future research on violent attitudes are discussed.
This study argues that the nature and intensity of a person's relationship with God creates a transposable cognitive schema that shapes people's views toward public policies such as executing convicted murderers. In this context, we investigate whether Americans who report having a close personal relationship with a loving God are less likely to support the death penalty. We hypothesize that such a relationship tempers the tendency to see punitiveness as an appropriate response to human failings. Individuals who hold a loving God image are more likely to believe that God responds to those who have “failed” or “sinned” by demonstrating unconditional love, forgiveness, and mercy. Accordingly, support for capital punishment is problematic because it contradicts the image of a merciful, forgiving deity; God's purpose—and admonition to believers—is to demonstrate compassion toward those who have trespassed against others. We test these possibilities using the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS). Controlling for a range of religious factors and other known predictors of death penalty attitudes, the results show that Americans with a personal relationship with a loving God are less likely to support capital punishment for convicted murderers.
The resource compensation hypothesis predicts that religiosity will serve as a cognitive buffer against structural constraints whereby more religious individuals will exhibit lower levels of fatalism than their less religious counterparts. The resource amplification perspective, on the other hand, predicts that religiosity will foster a sense that otherworldly forces control life's outcomes, leading to higher levels of fatalism. Using a precise measure of fatalism from the two most recent waves of the World Values Survey, a comparative examination of three Latin American countries, South Africa, and the United States is carried out. With Mexico as the sole exception, findings from ordered logistic regression models suggest that higher levels of religiosity are associated with lower levels of fatalism, supporting the resource compensation hypothesis. Implications for longstanding debates over the salience of modern religion are considered. An important and underappreciated cognitive function provided by thriving religious denominations and institutions may be to provide a catalyst for personal empowerment that comes through the rejection of a fatalistic mentality.
This study explored the important mediating role of personal religious variables and God concept in the use of religious coping in threat, loss, and challenge situations. One hundred and twenty-nine undergraduates completed questionnaires which included a God concept adjective checklist (Schaefer and Gorsuch 1992), a stressor scenario (Bjorck and Cohen 1993), and a measure of religious coping adapted from the BAV model (Gorsuch 1988). Results suggest that personal variables such as God concept and perception of others' beliefs played important mediating roles in religious coping in stressor situations. The relationship between coping style and stressor scenario was not entirely state-dependent, but influenced by personal variables. Strong relationships existed among God concept, the importance individuals placed on their religious and spiritual lives, and participation in religious activities.
Not only do few studies address the issue of how religious belief relates to political ideology, but little attempt has also been made to analyze this relationship from a comparative perspective. Using data from the International Social Survey Program, we examine how images of God, as measured by God's perceived level of engagement and authority, relate to political ideology in seven Western industrial and postindustrial societies. We find that variation in images of God has no effect on whether individuals are politically liberal or conservative in five of seven countries. Nonetheless, beliefs about God are strongly related to abortion and sexual morality attitudes in every country, but only sporadically related to ideas about social and economic justice. In the end, we argue that theological beliefs tend to be unrelated to a general measure of political ideology, not because religious beliefs are politically unimportant in these societies, but rather because religious perspectives are rarely fully liberal or conservative in their political orientation. In addition, we find that Americans hold unique views of God in comparison to other countries in our sample and that the American tendency to view God as more active and authoritative affects policy attitudes in ways contrary to the effects of church attendance.
In this study we sought to address several limitations of previous research on attachment theory and religion by (1) developing a dimensional attachment to God scale, and (2) demonstrating that dimensions of attachment to God are predictive of measures of affect and personality after controlling for social desirability and other related dimensions of religiosity. Questionnaire measures of these constructs were completed by a sample of university students and community adults (total n= 374). Consistent with prior research on adult romantic attachment, two dimensions of attachment to God were identified: avoidance and anxiety. After statistically controlling for social desirability, intrinsic religiousness, doctrinal orthodoxy, and loving God image, anxious attachment to God remained a significant predictor of neuroticism, negative affect, and (inversely) positive affect; avoidant attachment to God remained a significant inverse predictor of religious symbolic immortality and agreeableness. These findings are evidence that correlations between attachment to God and measures of personality and affect are not merely byproducts of confounding effects of socially desirable responding or other dimensions of religiosity.
As citizens of the most technologically advanced and economically developed country in the world, nearly all Americans stalwartly maintain their faith in God, much more so than residents of other postindustrial countries (Norris and Ingelhart 2004). But what is the content and meaning of this belief? Perhaps belief in God has become so pervasive in contemporary American culture that it reflects little about believers' deeper religious thoughts, identities, and actions. We find the opposite to be true. Outside the confines of seminaries, competing beliefs about who God is and what God wants have a clear and important connection to everyday religious life in the United States. Subtle distinctions in American images of God powerfully predict religious diversity as measured by belief in the truth of a single religious faith, religious devotion, and attitudes about the compatibility of secular and religious spheres. More specifically, we discern that American religious conservatism, in all its forms, can be aptly characterized by the belief that God is highly engaged in the world and particularly judgmental of human behavior.
Fundamentalist affiliation and religious beliefs are generally related to more punitive attitudes toward criminals. Fundamentalists
also tend to attribute criminality to individual dispositional factors, and in turn, such factors are related to punitiveness.
Recently, it has also been found that compassionate dimensions of religion are related to treatment-oriented policies. It
is still not clear which dimensions of religion are related to punitive or treatment ideology and what effects religious variables
may have when tested against secular concerns about crime and crime attributions. In the present research, we test three models
of punitiveness and one model of rehabilitation with demographic, secular, religious, and attributional factors. We found
that those for whom religion is salient in their daily lives tend to believe that the death penalty should be reserved for
older offenders and that those who believe in a punitive God tend to support harsher punishments.
This paper presents a critical overview of current concepts and analytic practices in stress research and considers how they can be changed to make the research more consistent with core sociological interests. An overarching concern of the paper is the analytic use of basic information about people's social and institutional affiliations and statuses. It is important that such information be treated not simply as data that need to be controlled statistically; we must examine the bearing of these data on each domain of the stress process: the exposure to and meaning of stressors, access to stress mediators, and the psychological, physical, and behavioral manifestations of stress. The conceptualization and measurement of stressors should move away from their focus on particular events or chronic strains and should seek instead to observe and assess over time constellations of stressors made up of both events and strains. Moreover, the effects of the mediators--coping and social support--are evaluated most fruitfully in terms of their effects in limiting the number, severity, and diffusion of stressors in these constellations. Finally, sociological stress researchers should not be bound to outcomes that better serve the intellectual interests of those who work with biomedical and epidemiological models of stress, nor should the research be committed exclusively to a single outcome.
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