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This article presents a commentary on papers about the sociology of religion. The question of the influence of the sociology of religion on general sociology and on the general intellectual debate is easier to pose than to answer. There is a growing awareness that there are well-developed sociologies other than those which dominate Western social science. Reading Emile Poulat's paper about the founding of the Conférence Internationale de Sociologie des Religions, one is struck by the fact that the sociology of religion is presented as a world of its own. It is as if the sociology of religion does not need any external or outside justifications for its existence and development. Meanwhile, James Beckford points out that there have been various studies describing and revealing some important social tendencies. There has been proliferation of studies of religious movements, charismatic renewals and fundamentalist uprisings with visible and dramatic effects on social life and societal frameworks. Industrial society had a fairly stable structure and an institutional build-up based on rules that are centrally enforced by state authorities and shared norms. The information society displays a much greater variety of codes, world views and cosmologies.

An introduction is presented which discusses the process of selecting the papers published within the issue from a great number of papers related to religion and sociology which were presented at a conference in Santiago de Compostela.

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Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This section provides information on several resources on general, pastoral and religious psychology. Psychological Measurement and Prediction by P. Horst is the result of 35 years of experience in the development and application of psychological measuring instruments in governmental, industrial, military and educational institutions. It deals with such subjects as test domains, types of tests, conditions of administration, test homogeneity, reliability, specificity, validity, accuracy of prediction. In this book, The Scientific Analysis of Personality, R. Cattell gives a lively survey of his work as a scientific psychologist. He begins with a discussion of the methods in psychology. The literary and clinical methods make use of impressions and are unreliable. Cattell pleads for the more accurate experimental method, which can employ many variables at the same time. Professionalization edited by H. Vollmer and D. Mills begins with an introduction by the editors in which they try to give clear definitions of the concepts of professionalization, professionalism, professional, professional group and profession. Each chapter begins with an introduction by the editors, who have also provided a text to link up the papers with each other and at the end of each chapter, questions for discussion and further research.

This article presents notes on the 13th Conference of the Sociology of Religion at lloret-de-Mar, Costa-Brava, Catalonia, Spain, in 1975. The conference was held at a popular tourist resort. The place was crowded with bars, souvenirs and tourists mainly coming from Great Britain and West Germany. The theme of the conference was Religion and Social Change. The principal papers were not read at the conference but appeared in advance in the acts either in extenso or as resumés. The papers were discussed at the conference in five different kinds of sessions. It is quite possible to unite the many different papers and discussions in one single view or even in a short article. Thirty papers were printed in the acts, and half of them in extenso. The subject areas also varied widely: From African to Irish religion and from Polish to Japanese popular beliefs. The theoretical discussions also covered the wide range from traditional positivism and functionalism to some tender outbreaks of critical theory, This confrontation which is very usual among secular sociologists still possesses the charm of novelty among sociologists of religion, but nevertheless it made discussions difficult at the conference.

The author presents the Master Academy of Love (MAL), a project conducted by Catholics in Warsaw, Poland. The initiative is shown as typical of emotional capitalism: it resonates with the therapeutic emotional style, bolsters the social impact of psychology by combining the psychological discourse with the language of belief, employs the narrative of self-help and the narrative of suffering, and focuses on increasing the emotional competence of its audience. At the same time, the paper demonstrates MAL’s dualistic nature, that is, its innovative and conservative components. MAL is thus a project that uses the power of the therapeutic discourse to reinforce traditionalist tendencies in the Church. Eva Illouz’s (2007) considerations on the role of psychology in contemporary Western culture underpin the paper’s theoretical framework, while its empirical component is based on participant observations conducted at MAL meetings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Building on our critiques of the reasonable accommodation of religious minorities in Canada (see Selby et al., 2018a ; Beaman, 2017 ; Barras, 2016), this paper argues for attention to processes as intrinsic to everyday interactions of religiosity (following Tully, 1995, 2000 ; Van Quaquebeke et al., 2007). We contend that frameworks like Maclure and Taylor's (2010) on 'open' and 'closed' secularism are useful for nation state comparison, but ineffectively account for the power asymmetries lodged within everyday religiosity. Their model protects the status quo ; it does not call institutional values or procedures into question, erases the navigation that occurs before an 'accommodation' is requested, and entrenches conflict as reflective of the experiences of religious minorities. Based on interviews with 90 self-defined Muslims in two cities, we propose a model of navigation and negotiation to better capture how religious practices are contextual and embedded in power relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the lens of political theory, this article examines how the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) captures the ways in which Indigenous political actors operate in a spiritual key in the public sphere. It considers how the Calls to Action of the TRC – the implementation of which has received support from federal, provincial and municipal governments – imply a re-envisioning of Canadian society that cannot be accommodated within a rigidly 'closed' secularism, which sequesters ceremony and sacrality to the private sphere. The paper argues that the model of open secularism posited by Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor, allows space for religion as a fundamental component of secular democratic order and participation, central to processes of Reconciliation in Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper I look at personal histories of middle class women who belong to a Catholic group in Quito, Ecuador. Using a poststructuralist definition of the subject I explore the reasons why these women intentionally break the Church’s rules and make decisions that constitute sins. I argue that in order to understand their disobedience to Catholicism, it is necessary to contextualise their decisions. Their choices can be explained if we look at these women’s lives not only as Catholics but also as belonging to a social class and ethnicity and as members of a family. In this paper I want to explore how these different affiliations are combined and why and when one is prioritised over the others. In other words, how Catholic women adapt religion to fit in with their other needs. Ultimately, this paper will provide insights on the concept of agency and decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Sweden has remarkable Church records and population statistics, which are far more detailed and complete than the material from most other countries especially for the period after 1750. The purpose of this paper is to bring the usefulness and availability of Swedish Church statistics to the attention of the social sciences of religion. Specifically, the primary purpose of this article is to draw attention to the Stockholm Institute of Religion Church Statistics Data Sets. These Data Sets contain data relevant to a number of interesting research problems. Furthermore, the Data Sets are designed to allow analyses of development and change in Church commitment. In the first part of the paper, 19th century data will be used to shed light on the question as to whether equivalents of the recurrent 20th century findings on religion and social stratification can be established for the preceding century as well. The second part of the paper will utilize late 20th-century data to discuss the persistency of 19th century regional difference in Church involvement. The essential theme of the paper thus concerns the relations between 19th- and 20th-century religious life in Sweden.

This article presents an overview on the fourth consultation of the European Colloquium on the Sociology of Religion at William Temple College, Rugby, England from April 17-21, 1963. Twenty six people from a dozen countries, including the U.S. and Finland, met for the conference. Canon R. S. O. Stevens of Birmingham, who acted as secretary to the Colloquium, opened the conference, welcoming the visitors and introducing Miss M. Batten, Principal of the College, whose paper Religious Life in Britain in the Post-War Period, proved a fitting beginning, discussing as it did the basis for sociological investigation in the sphere of religion. The following morning, with the Reverend Michael Jackson in the chair, Doctor John Kent, a church historian from Manchester, gave a paper, Sociological Factors in Disunity. His analysis of the history of divisions within the Protestant churches in England was of considerable interest, and his suggestions as to the causes of the present movement towards Anglicanism on the part of Methodists in Britain, were illuminating. Plans for the future were discussed at length, Professor Goldschmidt giving the report for the steering committee. Brief reports on work in progress then followed.

Since the mid-1980s, music has become a site of resistance and political mobilization for Turkish Islamists. Based on interviews with prominent Islamist musicians and analyses of a cross-section of their albums, this paper examines the development of Islamist music in secular Turkey. In order to elaborate upon the power struggle between the secular state and Islamist groups in the realm of music, it first focuses on how the founding elite of Turkey treated music as part of its secular nation-formation project. It then locates Islamist music as a form of protest music and analyses its development through the 1980s and 1990s, in concert with the growing visibility of political Islam in other arenas. Thereafter, the paper demonstrates how Turkey’s fourth military intervention in 1997 led to the decline of Islamist music. The final section is devoted to a discussion of the strategies of survival employed by Islamist musicians in response to government repression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the background of the relation of religion and modernity in Greece from a historical and cultural perspective. As in most parts of the world so in Greece modernity has had a serious impact on both the church as an institution and on religious culture at large. Secularization has been a dominant process in Greek society and culture since independence and even before. Compared with other European countries, however, Greece is less secularized and the decline of religion as well as the advancement of modernity presents certain idiosyncratic patterns. The mainstream culture and social structure in the west as a whole has been moving along the same path of social change. Namely the path of modernity. The paper argues that for various special, historical and cultural reasons this has not been the case in Greece. On the political plane, because of its cultural and historical role, Greek Orthodoxy has been, implicitly and explicitly, one of the central ideological pillars of the modern Greek nation state. As a consequence of the constitutional position of Orthodoxy as the official religion of the country the Orthodox Church has lost its essential institutional autonomy to the state.

The object of this paper is to analyze the ideas and criteria on which the status hierarchy among South Asian Muslims is founded. This question is a hotly debated one in Western academic circles as well as among Muslims themselves. Both tend, for ideological reasons, to build sharply contrasted models: equalitarian Islam opposed to hierarchical Hinduism. The contention of this paper is that both Muslim and Hindu society share basic preconceptions about social hierarchy; it is erroneous and misleading to contrast them on this point. It is more rewarding to start from this basic homology in the social structure, and then to search for differences; such differences are to be found only at the top of the social hierarchy. As a consequence there is no reason to avoid the word "caste": the Muslim society appears as a truncated caste system. The ethnographic material used in this paper is reinterpreted in the light of medieval jurisprudence and of its reformulations by modern reformers; it is contented that the medieval view of a hierarchical society has not been seriously challenged to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the state of organized religion in Canada as of June 1986. It presents evidence showing that Canadians have not abandoned traditional religion but have stayed, preferring the old affiliations to anything new, including the option of no affiliation. Canadian census data reveal that 88% of Canadians are either Protestant or Roman Catholic, while 5% are affiliated with other religions and 7% have no affiliation. Religion in Canada, Protestant and Catholic style, has generally been viewed as being in a state of decline in recent decades. Considerable speculation has been given to where the people have been going. The evidence presented in this paper tells quite a different story. For the most part, Canadians have not abandoned traditional religion. They have stayed, preferring the old affiliations to anything new, including the option of no affiliation. But the content of their religion has seemingly been changing, involving a movement away from traditional Christian commitment in favor of the embracing of fragmented beliefs and practices. The vast majority of Canadians, finding that most religious groups in the country are sufficiently versatile to offer diversified religious content and functions, have had no reason to change their affiliations.

This paper argues that the relation between religion and politics has been treated quite arbitrarily in the literature of political science, sociology and social anthropology, especially in the area of the political uses of religion. The term sociology is used generally to cover the relevant literature of all three disciplines just mentioned, although the other two terms will sometimes be used too. The antagonism between church and state in the history of western society is paradoxically one of the springs of this view of the role of religion in power. For, if spiritual authority were to compete with temporal power it is only natural that the former would utilize its exclusive source of legitimacy, which is religious, in claiming political obedience. The examples described in this paper illustrate a traditional ideology in which, rather than religion being used for political purposes, the two existed together as an undifferentiated whole. This ideology which we have called integral, was ingrained in the consciousness of the people and was expressed, among other ways, in a diversity of magico-religious and cultic activities. Where religion and politics are thus undifferentiated, the question of using the former for the purposes of the latter is unnecessary.

This paper focuses on the role which factors such as Reformed theology, church organization, and local circumstances and events played in bringing to pass the current division between the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa and other local and foreign Reformed churches. The central thesis of this paper is that it was Reformed theology and the organizational structure of the Reformed church in the South African context which allowed local prejudices, social practices and material interests to gradually become consolidated, systematized, intellectualized, legalized and theologized into the Apartheid system. This paper asks in particular how it has been possible for separate branches of the Reformed church to grow so apart that the behavior of certain branches came to be condemned as sin and their theology as heretical. Apartheid is the official policy of the government of South Africa and has been such since 1948. The legislative expression of this policy seeks to separate Whites and Blacks as far as practically possible and to preserve the power and privileges of Whites. Apartheid implicates Calvinism and Reformed Christianity very deeply because it was from these sources that a particular Reformed church evolved which, in the context of South Africa, gave the world a new crime against humanity--as Apartheid has been called.

This paper examines the concept of power within Protestantism. It particularly puts interest in the efforts of Paul Tillich, a theologian, to examine the connection between Protestantism and power. Compared with Roman Catholicism, Protestantism would appear to be relatively powerless. The concept of power, as distinct from that of authority, has become a much valued tool of the sociologist, political scientist and historian in analyzing and attempting to understand social relations, social institutions and changes in society. One of the tasks of the sociologist is to compare theory with practice. The author argues that although in terms of theology and constitution, power resides in the congregation, it is also possible to see what within such a milieu power may be manipulated. In practical terms there may well be certain lay people who because of a natural flair for leadership become traditional figures of power and who constantly heap power upon themselves. What is required of all churches, Catholic and Protestant, is that they clearly acknowledge the various types of power they yield. The paper concludes by stating that perhaps the full realization of the ambiguity most churches have towards power offers an opportunity for various churches to come together if they wish to.

This paper sketches in a preliminary way the relationship between conservative Protestantism and politics. Although the variety of forms which that relationship may take place is quite considerable, this paper argues that underlying that variety is a more limited range of patterns which can be explained in terms of certain specifiable factors. Conservative Protestantism takes many forms, from the Brethren who eschew any active participation in the political affairs of their society, cultivating their own purity in pietistic withdrawal from a corrupting world, to the vigorous intervention of the conservative Protestant in the political arena, as in Ulster, Ireland, where, indeed, prominent politicians are quite likely to be clergymen of one or another Protestant denomination. This might suggest that relatively similar religious beliefs can produce quite antithetical relationships to the political sphere and are thus demonstrably not causally related to particular political outcomes. The authors argue however that this is mistaken. According to them, religious beliefs do not operate in a vacuum, and different implications and emphases may be drawn from them in different circumstances.

This sections introduces papers on new religious movements discussed in the March 1983 issue of Social Compass.

This article highlights a social science congress on religion and politics held in Amsterdam, Netherlands in May 1983. The initiators of the event hope that the congress will stimulate developments in religion and politics in the Netherlands. The organization of the event was inspired by a range of phenomena: the fact that sociologists had been drawn into discussions about the churches' social and political testimony but that a thorough basis of insights into the manifold relations between religion and politics was lacking, so far; the fact that both sociology and political science had concentrated on the notorious pillarization, characteristic of the relation between religion and politics in the country, whereas that very pillarization was rapidly losing ground and giving way to another pluralism; the presence of sizeable old and new immigrant groups from Mediterranean countries as well as former Dutch colonies, who represent various foreign religions; the fact that cultural anthropologists were turning their attention to the investigation of Western subpopulations, especially the immigrant groups; a growing awareness--even though weakly developed--that interdisciplinary cooperation cannot be omitted any more.

This paper considers the public response to selected new religious movements in Great Britain under five headings. It begins with the legal and constitutional framework within which religious groups operate; the second section considers the strength of organized opposition to new religious movements; the third topic is the self-defense measures adopted by new religious movements; fourthly, the treatment of new religious movements in the mass media is analyzed; and finally, this paper presents a discussion of the public policy implications. One of the concomitants of the multi-national character of the new religious movements is that it is more difficult than in the case of movements confined to a single country to identify the factors accounting for their relative success or failure. The rate of their membership growth, the value of their property-holdings, their economic viability, and their public prestige all vary with factors transcending the boundaries of any particular country. Nevertheless, the contention of this paper is that the deliberate marketing of the multinational new religious movements is refracted differently in different countries and that part of the task of understanding these movements sociologically is to examine carefully ways in which the public in each country responds to them.

This paper looks at the historical context and the membership of the new religious movements in Great Britain as of March 1983. According to the author, it would be shortsighted not to recognize that both contemporary dissension among people and the religious movements can have very serious consequences both for the individual and the society. She notes that it does also seem very important that the present wave of unease and perturbation about the new youth movements should be viewed in some kind of social and historical perspective. In order that the present form of dissent, and that the reaction which it has produced in the media and from those who oppose the new movements, might be understood as part of a wider, continually shifting, social context, the first half of this paper consists of a slightly more elaborated introduction to the social milieu than might otherwise seem warranted. The rest of this paper is concerned primarily with those movements which are, first, are either religious or quasi-religious, second, demand more than merely nominal membership in that their members will be likely to change their life style in a radical way, and/or, third, are considered a real or potential threat, or at least undesirable, by the general public in so far as it is aware of them.

This paper recapitulates and summarizes the achievements and failures of sociology of religion in Spain as of December 1976. The author explains that this paper is by no means the first attempt to elaborate a historical synthesis of socio-religious research in Spain. According to him, other authors have tried at various times to analyze the situation of sociology of religion in Spain by studying the main periods of its evolution and development. He points out however that the acritical attitude adopted by most of these papers is of very little interest in 1976; analysis of what was done in the past has no meaning unless it is related to contemporary trends in research, as well as to the elaboration of certain priorities with regard to future research. While this paper limits itself to a historical review of the prior development of sociology of religion in Spain, it tries to point out to the future by critically weighing the acquisitions in this field. The author confesses that the present effort of recapitulating and summarizing the achievements and failures of Spanish sociology of religion inevitably places him in a rather delicate and even uncomfortable situation. According to him, criticism in this case becomes self-criticism in so far as it concerns a group of investigators to which he himself belongs.

This paper describes the relationship between the adoption of a newly-imported religion and social change on the Ryukyu Islands, Japan, focusing upon the case of the village of Bora on Miyako Island, where the author has done research for several years. This paper also refers to the case of Sokagakkai and Iesu no Mitama Church. Interested in the problem of the adoption of Christianity in isolated villages of Japan, the author has been doing socio-religious research in the village of Nishiamuro on Kakeroma Island since 1966. In contemporary society, mass conversion and the adoption of Christianity culminating in baptism are considered to be exceptional phenomena. Field research done by the author in Okinawa (Ryukyu Islands) brought to light a similar example of mass conversion on the island of Miyako. In observing the adoption of new religion and the performance of field research, various standards are possible. The author has focused upon the following points: 1) the way by which Catholicism was brought to Bora; 2) the socio-cultural factors which made this adoption possible; 3) personal factors as the way of thinking, the religious consciousness, and the human relationships of the converts, and changes in them.

This article locates some of the major problem-areas encountered in attempts to produce an autonomously sociological approach to the study of religious conversion. The discussion is generated by a general dissatisfaction with prevailing methodological strategies conventionally deployed in study within the sociology of religion as a whole, and by a concern to specify focus on conversion as a means of both highlighting the cognitive consequences of such deficiencies and of indicating some directions for the delineation of alternative and potentially more fruitful approaches within the broadly micro-constructionist sociological paradigm. The paper begins with an overview of prevailing tendencies in the social-scientific study of conversion by way of highlighting the analytic linkage between methodological strategy and conceptual suppositions as to the substantive nature of conversion phenomena which characterizes them. Next, this paper discusses the relevance for study of conversion of some attempted reformulations of the conceptual underpinnings of sociology of religion and suggests that analysis premised upon the empirical as distinct from the theoretic fundamentality of religious belief may go some way to operationalizing sociological inquiry into conversion as an activity whereby religious knowledge becomes relevant for individuals.

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the problem of role-conflict, with reference to the role of the Pope. The position of leadership is rife with conflicts of the real and the ideal. This paper begins with a discussion of the role of the Pope. However, the key idea which it considers is the problem of the bishop or the pastor as well. It is the problem of the pastor of any formal religious groupings not merely the Catholic pastor. For practical purposes, this paper focuses on the Pope or the role of the Pope but in all cases it can be considered as reading pastor in place of Pope. The Pope is a man of many roles. His role as head of the Church, as spiritual father of the people, is such a profound symbol that people frequently overlook the fact that he is also head of an organization. Of the various roles the Pope plays two that are most important to be recognized as one considers the Clergy in Church and Society are: first, that of spiritual leader, and, second, that of organizational leader. In the first he is concerned with the spiritual and moral needs of man. In the second he is concerned with the problems of bureaucracy and the needs and expectations of a vast organization. The roles are different but they are not easily separated.

This article utilizes an analytical framework that examines the differences in the organizational forms and strategies of Islamic organizations with reference to both internal and external factors affecting the organization, such as internal organizational characteristics and national and transnational political opportunity structures. This perspective is applied to review the empirical results of recent secondary studies from a cross-national and transatlantic perspective. In particular, this paper centres around a meta-analysis of research findings collected in the volume Islamic organizations in Europe and the USA: A multidisciplinary perspective, edited by Kortmann and Rosenow-Williams (2013), which presents new empirical research on Islamic organizations in the USA, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the UK, the Baltic States, Poland, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a three-year ethnographic study of processes of identity construction in 15 Christian-Muslim couples in Italy, this paper focuses on religion and analyses how partners rely on various strategies in order to deal with religious differences within the context of family life. Does religious pluralism emerge as a problem actually perceived by those couples? Chosen as a paradigmatic case study of ‘mixed’ couples, the analysis shows how partners, united by a common purpose to minimize their religious differences, often overcome religious pluralism. Four strategies to accomplish this are distinguished: ‘renunciation’, ‘closeting’, ‘conversion’ and ‘spiritualization’. It is concluded that what is defined in public debate as ‘mixed’ – in terms of religious differences – is not always experienced as such within the family context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pentecostalism has ‘bucked the trend’ predicted by Émile Durkheim and others that religion would decline and disappear in a secular modern age. In searching for the clues as to why this happened, this paper outlines Durkheim’s thought on the phenomenon that sparks religious life – effervescence – and his belief that in the secular future societies would make use of this phenomenon to create instances of ‘secular sacralisation’. Following these ideas, the author traces the development of Pentecostalism, a religious phenomenon that has harnessed the power of effervescence and grown explosively in the ‘secular’ age. Thus, Pentecostalism has appropriated (in part) the role that Durkheim believed society itself would have to fill in a future, secular age, and has reinforced the link between effervescent experience and a transcendent divine entity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to analyse the reformulation of the place and role of religion in Spanish public institutions after the constitutional disestablishment of the Catholic Church and religious diversification of society. Drawing upon qualitative fieldwork in six Spanish prisons, we argue that there is a process of the realignment of forces between the religious groups that provide services in such institutions, the Catholic Church adopting an attitude in between adaptation and subtle resistance to the loss of a number of its previous prerogatives. This incomplete demonopolisation of public organisations can be explained as the result of two opposing forces: (a) convergence towards the European standards of accommodation of religious diversity; and (b) Catholic resistance to the loss of established advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Social Compass is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In light of the Vatican’s recent doctrinal investigation of American Catholic nuns, this paper considers gender inequality in the Catholic Church immediately before, during and after the Second Vatican Council. Using Weber’s frameworks of authority construction and literature on corporate structures that reify inequality and gendered workplaces, the author argues that viewing the Church as a complex social organization allows for a fuller understanding of the ways in which its structures of power are constructed and reproduced. Ultimately, the author contends that religious sisters are stakeholders in a hierarchical organization that has prevented them from assuming leadership roles and from developing official Church teaching. Finally, he identifies several hegemonic forces that perpetuate gender barriers in the Catholic Church, specifically the obligatory wearing of the religious habit and the ban on women’s ordination. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Originally from Canada and sent to the Philippines in 1921, the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (MIC) were entrusted with the administration of the Chinese General Hospital in Manila. This mission put them in contact with many immigrants and residents from China. This paper examines the multiple challenges that the sisters met in dealing with a dying population they were trying to convert in the face of well established Buddhist and Taoist beliefs and practices. The sisters fought against these practices, turning the hospital where they worked into a place of ontological confrontation. Distributing medals and images of the Virgin Mary, the sisters also contributed to the plasticity of the existing Chinese religious traditions, especially the devotion to Santa Maria. The dedication of the sisters to care and education as well as their tolerance allowed them to develop lasting and profitable relationships with their patients. The Christianization of the Chinese nevertheless remained incomplete, their centuries-old traditions persisting. In the anthropological study of missions, this case study shows that misunderstandings often remain at the heart of the conversion process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Brazil, the cult of saints brings into focus differences between formerly hegemonic Catholics and an increasing number of Evangelicals. In the context of a small town where a vernacular saint is worshipped, the practice of hagiographic narratives is viewed as a means of testing certainty. Analysis of these narratives (motifs or plots), the order of their episodes and the situations in which they are spoken reveals differing ways of exploring doubt and certainty. The missing elements that leave the story open are seen as ‘commonalities’, which contribute to social cohesion, allowing for creative reinterpretations of past and present events. The paper concludes with a brief comparison of the implications of exchanges of goods and exchanges of words, which demonstrates the role of the latter in the construction of the group’s social temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is based on fieldwork among Portuguese, Italians, Catalans and Spaniards influenced by the transnational Goddess spirituality movement. Through an analysis of ritual narratives the author analyses the role of doubt and uncertainty in contemporary rituals created within Goddess spirituality. She will show that contemporary crafted rituals offer a privileged window on the uncertainty intrinsic in ritual because participants feel less constrained by a long-standing religious tradition and talk more openly about their doubts and their strategies to neutralize them than in the case of secular ceremonies. Drawing on Simon Coleman’s analysis of pilgrimage and ritual (2009, 2013) she suggests that uncertainty may play an important role not only in rituals created in the context of ‘New Age’ spirituality but also in other contemporary rituals created in plural and increasingly secularized Western contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Put in place in Peru in 2005, Programa Juntos aims to integrate poor families into the market economy through conditional cash transfers that provide incentives to pregnant women and mothers of children under the age of 18 to obtain identity documents, health services and education. Since its inception, however, this social programme has been subject to apocalyptic and mythical interpretations that portray its participants as voluntarily marked by the devil or controlled by dangerous forces. Following the work of James Scott (2000) and Michael Taussig (2010), this paper attempts to read these interpretations seriously, drawing out how they can be seen as critical discourses vis-à-vis social programmes and the manner in which they are put in place in the Andean hinterland. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The discourse and techniques of marketing have permeated many non-business areas of social life, including religion. In this paper, we explore the implications of this trend for the practice of the Christian church. Using two cases of mega-churches in Singapore, we show how marketing fosters a re-conceptualization of religion where religious organizations seek to build their ‘brands’ through diversified offerings. Marketing may enable religious organizations to grow, but the cases also show how it can fundamentally change the practice of religion itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A noticeable shift has been recently observed in Western-based Pentecostal mission agencies’ activities in mainland Southeast Asia. Where once these organizations avoided a visible priority on social justice as being at odds with their understanding of mission, the funding for and implementation of such programs has increased dramatically for the last two decades. This shift in focus is best understood by considering the motivations for this work and the perceived differences between evangelism and development work. This paper explores the motivations of these agencies for engaging in international development, and in particular the extent to which development programs are seen by these agencies as a strategy for proselytization and the extent to which they are conducted out of other humanitarian motivations. The research is based on a phenomenological literature survey and new interview data exploring development operations of western-based Pentecostal mission organizations in mainland Southeast Asia. Analysis of these data challenges preconceived notions of a distinction between motives of evangelism and humanitarian concern. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Fatiha Kaouès focuses on evangelical activities in Lebanon, where religious communities are the foundation of public order rather than the State and each denomination has its own social and economic network. This raises the question as to the definition of citizenship and the construction of social ties in the context of a strong religious communitarianism and a weak state. This paper considers a few development projects supported by evangelical movements and the various frameworks, limits and challenges of their activities in Lebanon. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses papers presented at the 2011 conference of the Société Internationale de Sociologie des Religions/International Society for the Sociology of Religion, on topics including monastic utopias, Pentecostalism in French Polynesia, and evangelical Protestantism in Lebanon.