Research On Religion | 2016

Archive for February, 2016

Keith Pavlischek on John Courtney Murray and Dignitatis Humanae

Tags: American Ecclesiastical Review, church-state relations, Dignitatis Humanae, Everson v Board of Education, John Courtney Murray, McCollum v Board of Education, modus vivendi approach, nativists, Pierce v Society of Sisters, pluralism, radical secularists, religious freedom, religious liberty, subsidiarity, The Problem of God, tolerance, Vatican Council II, We Hold These Truths

With the 50th anniversary of Dignitatis Humanae just past us, we visit with independent scholar Keith Pavlischek to discuss the life and thought of John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit priest who had a profound impact on how Catholics think about religious pluralism and liberty. We review the major document on religious freedom released at the Second Vatican Council and then discuss how Murray became involved in this debate after being prompted to think about religious freedom following a series of US Supreme Court decisions. We also reflect upon what Murray would have thought about our current church-state landscape.

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Wafa Hakim Orman on Religion and Economic Crises

Tags: 2007 Financial Crisis, club goods, collective action problems, Daniel Chen, domestic violence, economic crises, farm crisis, General Social Survey, Google searches, housing crisis, Koran study classes, mortgages, prayer, religion and economics, religious attendance, rituals

Do people respond to economic crises by intensifying their religious practice? Prof. Wafa Hakim Orman (University of Alabama, Huntsville) discusses a set of novel studies she is conducting to see if this is the case. Using the 1980s farm crisis and the 2007-08 housing/financial crises as test cases, Prof. Orman explores if people in the hardest hit areas of these crises attended church more, intensified their prayer, and how this might have an effect on domestic violence. Prof. Orman also provides one of the best and pithiest explanations for why these two economic crises occurred.

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Andrew Johnson on Pentecostals in Prison in Brazil

Tags: authenticity, Brazil, brothers' cell, drug gangs, evangelical Protestantism, favelas, fieldwork, Macumba, Pentecostalism, police brutality, prison, prison riots, soccer, violence

Life in prison can be quite difficult and violent, especially within the Brazilian penal system. Dr. Andrew Johnson at the Center for Religion & Civil Culture discusses his extremely innovative work on the role of Pentecostalism in Brazilian favelas and prison. His research had him actually living among inmates for several weeks in a Rio de Janeiro prison. We talk about the relationship that Pentecostals have with drug gangs with poor neighborhoods in Brazil and the role that religion plays within the cell block.

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Eileen Kane on the Russian Hajj

As industrialization progressed in the 19th century and railroads became more commonplace, the costs of making the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj) became more affordable for the large number of Muslims who lived in Russian territory. Prof. Eileen Kane, a historian at Connecticut College, discusses how the Russians tsars and the Soviets managed the pilgrimage routes to facilitate their geo-political and economic goals, and how Muslims in turn reacted. This story has heretofore gone untold but reveals a great deal about religion and politics, not only in centuries gone by, but for our contemporary world as well.

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