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Ritual, the Self, and Sincerity
This paper critiques the modern cult of sincerity, suggesting that selves cannot be selves except in relationships which are constituted by ritualized behaviors fundamentally at odds with the demands of the self. Such ritual acts, are, I maintain, crucial to the existence of the relational self. Rituals create that subjunctive space, a shared "could be" where such selves can exist—in relation w…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1073 - 1096
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Spirituality in Modern Society
This paper attempts to liberate the concept of "spirituality" from its apolitical consumerized present, and suggests that our thinking about selves as well as about secularity and religion must recognize its debts to Orientalist practices.
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1097 - 1120
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Human Predicament
This paper explores the notion of the "human predicament" by a comparative examination of the works of Tillich, Sankara, Catherine Keller and Friedrich Nietzsche. The text highlights the radical differences between these thinkers in order to bring out existential issues that any conception of the human predicament must somehow address.
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1121 - 1140
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Polysemy of the Secular
We think of "secularization" as a process that can occur anywhere (and for some people, is occurring everywhere). And we think of secularist regimes as options for any country, whether they are adopted or not. And certainly, these words crop up everywhere. But do they really mean the same thing? Are there not, rather, subtle differences, which can bedevil cross-cultural discussions of these mat…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 pp. 1143 - 1166
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Introduction: Odd Ways of Being Secular
Secularism in the United States finds its most heightened expression in its constitutional arrangements; in this respect Britain falls short but by its own secularist standards—as the following essays display—American politics are saturated by Christian, especially Protestant concepts and sensibilities, which shape the hopes and fears, the ideals and blind spots of American political culture. I…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1169 - 11
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Secular Citadel and the Untended Garden
Functionally, religion is what is held as sacred, that is, as untouchable. In the United States, taxes and military manpower are untouchable and, therefore, beyond objection by particular religions. The courts, too, are untouchable in determining what is and what is not religion. Despite these severe limitations on religious freedom, sometimes religion has broken the national consensus - most n…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1173 - 118
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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We Are All Religious Now. Again.
In this essay I set current reappraisals of the secular, of secularism, and of secularization, in the context of the ways in which law regulates religion in the U.S. today. Religion under the rule of law—as it is practiced in the United States. Virtually all Americans today, however orthodox their asserted religious identities, Protestant or Catholic or Jewish or Muslim, claim the right to asso…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1181 - 119
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Jefferson's Rickety Wall: Sacred and Secular in American Politics
From the start, Americans were wrestling with the proper connections between "private and public felicity." On its face, the first line of the First Amendment to the Constitution seems to settle the issue: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Thomas Jefferson declared that this provision "buil[t] a wall of separation bet…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1199 - 122
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Obama's Neo-New Deal: Religion, Secularism, and Sex in Political Debates Now
The "religious and secular divide" cannot be understood unless we think about the way sex gets mobilized on both sides of this supposed divide. In our joint writing, we have resisted thinking of the religious and the secular as a divide; we have rather been interested to think them relationally—as relations. Thus, the larger suggestion of this paper is that we cannot truly imagine and practice …
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1227 - 125
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Introduction: Moral Crusades Then and Now: Religious and Secular
This introduction frames the papers that follow in terms of an overlapping project of recognizing asymmetries and shifts as communities seek to draw lines between church and state, private values and public morality, insiders and outsiders, and reconcilable and irreconcilable differences. The ideas of the religious and secular sometimes fold into each other or split apart to make new alignments…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1257 - 126
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Prophetic Religion: A Transracial Challenge to Modern Democracy
Most contributors approach the secularization question out of concern with intolerance and repression. But a peculiar kind of religion may impinge upon secular life in a different way: a prophetic religion may generate the solidarity and will-to-sacrifice that oppressed peoples need to fight for freedom and equality. The tradition of the Hebrew Prophets (shared by Islam and Judaism) played a ke…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1261 - 127
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
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- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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American Protestant Moralism and the Secular Imagination: From Temperance to …
Modern secularity as a historically specific hegemonic social formation that prevailed in the U.S. in the mid-20th century depended on and was, in part, constituted by the exclusion of fundamentalists and their Bible-based moral rhetorics from public life. This essay argues that the movements for temperance, prohibition, and prohibition repeal were an important context in which the political an…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1277 - 130
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Culture War and the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Problem of Pluralism and W…
The culture war over the last several decades in North America appears to be a proxy between the conflict of the sacred and the secular. Yet, this perception ignores the complexity that actually exists. Advocates for competing sides have never denied a place for the other but affirmed the necessity of pluralism in American democracy. Rather, the conflict has been a contest over the language and…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1307 - 132
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case
This essay summarizes the themes and issues of the conference and raises further questions concerning how religion and the secular might be theorized and related.
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1327 - 13
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Reclaiming the Secular and the Religious: The Primacy of Religious Autonomy
What is the "secular"? Is it a state of official neutrality, or is it one in which religious influences are on the wane? This "polysemy" about "the secular" permeates our public and legal discussions and has unfortunate consequences for debates over our constitutional arrangements. In these comments, I will suggest that a different vocabulary—a vocabulary of religious freedom rather than secula…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1333 - 13
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
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- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Religion, Secularism, and a Democratic Politics of "As If"
"The religious" and "the secular" are often posed as a divide; a narrative which poses religion and secularism as antagonists. This long-standing habit of thought remains active in the contemporary United States, polarizing public debates and generating misunderstanding. Are there other ways of talking about and enacting the relations between "religion" and "secularism" that can avoid balkaniza…
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- Volume 76, Number 4 Winter 2009 Pages: 1345 - 1350
- ISBN/ISSN
- 0037783x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- Social Research: An International Quarterly
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Money and State Legislative Elections: The Conditional Impact of Political Co…
This study builds on existing literature demonstrating the conditional effects of contextual and conversion factors on the relationship between money and votes in state legislative elections. A conditional theory of the impact of spending in state legislative campaigns is developed, emphasizing that the effectiveness of expenditures should vary according to the number of “up for grabs” voters i…
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- Vol. 38 no. 3 May 2010 pp. 399-424
- ISBN/ISSN
- 1532673x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- American Politics Research
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Mobilizing the Mobilized: The Electoral Recruitment Paradox
The campaign mobilization literature argues that contacting will have the most influence on individuals who are socioeconomically or politically disadvantaged. Yet evidence persistently shows that the advantaged are disproportionately contacted. This paradox is explained once one recognizes that contacting during elections serves divergent goals that are tied to the election cycle and to electi…
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- Vol. 38 no. 3 May 2010 pp. 425-442
- ISBN/ISSN
- 1532673x
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- -
- Series Title
- American Politics Research
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Deracializing Obama: White Voters and the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate Race
Using the unique circumstances of the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate election, we report findings from survey data from a probability sample of White voters conducted in Illinois during the course of the 2004 election. In an experimental manipulation embedded in the survey, we tested four distinctive framings of Barack Obama by systematically altering the degree and content of his racialization as a…
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- Vol. 38 no. 3 May 2010 pp. 443-470
- ISBN/ISSN
- 1532673x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- American Politics Research
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Racial Environment and Political Participation
How does the racial environment influence mass political participation? The power—threat hypothesis predicts that a larger out-group population in the surrounding environment increases citizen participation, whereas the relational goods hypothesis predicts that it decreases participation. I attempt to reconcile these conflicting arguments into a single hypothesis positing that citizens’ decisio…
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- Vol. 38 no. 3 May 2010 pp. 471-501
- ISBN/ISSN
- 1532673x
- Collation
- -
- Series Title
- American Politics Research
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