Research On Religion » culture wars

Barry Hankins on Jesus, Gin, and the Culture Wars (Encore Presentation)

tonygill — Sun, 22 Apr 2018 15:35:58 +0000

While we are on a sabbatical, trying to get our format updated and finding more outlets on which you can enjoy this podcast, please enjoy this encore presentation from five years ago.

Most astute social observers today agree that the United States is in the throes of a “culture war,” with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and drug legalization taking center stage in many political debates. But what if I told you that such “culture wars” are not uncommon in US history? Indeed, Prof. Barry Hankins of Baylor University makes the argument that “cultural wars” are the default position in American history, and it was only during the 1930s – 1970s that we seemed to have been immune from such conflict. He illustrates this point with a detailed discussion of The Roaring Twenties (and the decades leading up to that time), when issues such as Prohibition, evolution, obscenity, and a weakening of Christianity were the hot topics of the time. We begin our discussion by noting the dramatic changes that the U.S. experienced around the turn of the 20th century, roughly from 1880 to 1920. Rapid industrialization and urbanization, combined with new forms of immigration, set the stage for wide array of new cultural challenges facing the nation, in general, and Christianity in particular. As the Roaring ’20s were known as the era of Prohibition (and the time of the “speak easy”), we start with that topic. Prof. Hankins reviews the history of the temperance movement and reveals some surprising findings, such that alcohol consumption in the US during the 1820s was among the highest in the world and that temperance movements did help to sober the country up. He notes this was true of Prohibition, as well, countering an often-used argument today regarding the legalization of drugs that such legal restrictions don’t really affect usage much. Our conversation turns to some of the more charismatic characters of the era with a focus on Billy Sunday, a forerunner of today’s “megachurch” pastors. Barry recounts Rev. Sunday’s life and how he harnessed his athletic fame in the name of evangelization. Billy Sunday’s story is a nice reminder that “media star preachers” are not just a phenomenon of the late 20th century but emerged in an era when people were becoming increasingly concentrated in cities and mass media such as radio and theater was becoming more common. We also cover some of the more scandal-plagued preachers of the time including Aimee Semple-McPherson, J. Frank Norris, Daddy Grace, and Father Divine, reminding us that there probably is nothing new under the sun. We then take up the topic of the factionalization occurring within Christianity that is going on during this time — fundamentalists vs modernists. We discover that the liberal modernists tended to win these battles, often forcing more fundamentalist groups to break away and form new denominations. Again, this is reminiscent of our current time. The conversation then moves to an interesting puzzle that Barry is still thinking about, which is why the culture wars subsided between the 1930s and (roughly) 1980. We both offer us some speculation on this topic and finish off with additional thoughts about what the culture wars of the 1920s has to tell us about our culture wars today. Recorded: May 2, 2013.

Markus Schafer on Religion, Doing Good, Networks, & Triadic Closure

tonygill — Sun, 19 Mar 2017 08:00:16 +0000

How connected to other people are religious traditionalists and evangelical Christians? Contrary to the popular image that “holy rollers” are rather insular in their social dealings, Dr. Markus Schafer (Sociology, University of Toronto) shares the results of a number of studies he conducted on how linked in religious and non-religious folks are to their broader communities. Interestingly, he finds that religious traditionalists are more broadly networked than many social scientists might think, and that these connections also lead them to be more helpful in offering emotional support and personal advice to people who aren’t even religious. After a bit of discussion about how Markus came to this line of research (along with his interest in old people), Prof. Schafer elaborates on the burgeoning field of network theory and analysis. He then defines what religious traditionalists and pro-social behaviors are, further detailing how he used the Portrait of American Life Survey (PALS) to leverage this dataset in creative ways to answer some new questions. One of the more interesting findings of Prof. Schafer is how many individuals are closely linked (four closest friends) to an individual considered a religious traditionalist; roughly 60% (give or take a few percentage points) have a someone we consider to be religiously traditional within our tight network, despite such individuals being a rather small proportion of the US population as a whole. Moreover, Prof. Schafer discovers that traditionalist exhibit higher odds of offering people emotional support and personal advice, including to individuals who are not traditionalists themselves. This indicates that those religious folks are not as insular as they are often stereotyped. We discuss some of the reasons why this may be, and some possible methodological biases within the data. Dr. Schafer’s next study looks at how individuals connect their various friends, something sociologists call “triadic closure.” What this means is if Bob has a friendship with Ann and Carol, but Ann and Carol don’t know one another, triadic closure would mean that Ann and Carol do become friends thanks to Bob. (Thanks, Bob!) This is the stuff of “dense networks” and help to build close-knit communities. And again, the evidence points towards religious individuals — most specifically evangelical Christians — being very good at creating and closing these triangles, indicating that they are not as insular and “church-centric” as one might expect. It is also noted that rural folks also score high on triadic closure. Both Tony and Markus toss around some explanations for why evangelicals might be particularly good triadic closure, and we talk about the missionizing nature of evangelicals and how things like “small groups” often try to connect different people on secular interests such as horseback riding and other things. We conclude briefly with one final study Markus conducted. In this study, again making use of the PALS data, we find out that intercessory prayers have a positive impact on the optimism of the recipient of the prayers. This fits in with the network nature of much of Prof. Schafer’s work in that it gives yet another perspective on how people connect with one another in ways that have beneficial outcomes. Recorded: March 7, 2017.

Barry Hankins on Jesus, Gin, and The Culture Wars

tonygill — Sun, 12 May 2013 08:00:22 +0000

Most astute social observers today agree that the United States is in the throes of a “culture war,” with issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and drug legalization taking center stage in many political debates. But what if I told you that such “culture wars” are not uncommon in US history? Indeed, Prof. Barry Hankins of Baylor University makes the argument that “cultural wars” are the default position in American history, and it was only during the 1930s – 1970s that we seemed to have been immune from such conflict. He illustrates this point with a detailed discussion of The Roaring Twenties (and the decades leading up to that time), when issues such as Prohibition, evolution, obscenity, and a weakening of Christianity were the hot topics of the time. We begin our discussion by noting the dramatic changes that the U.S. experienced around the turn of the 20th century, roughly from 1880 to 1920. Rapid industrialization and urbanization, combined with new forms of immigration, set the stage for wide array of new cultural challenges facing the nation, in general, and Christianity in particular. As the Roaring ’20s were known as the era of Prohibition (and the time of the “speak easy”), we start with that topic. Prof. Hankins reviews the history of the temperance movement and reveals some surprising findings, such that alcohol consumption in the US during the 1820s was among the highest in the world and that temperance movements did help to sober the country up. He notes this was true of Prohibition, as well, countering an often-used argument today regarding the legalization of drugs that such legal restrictions don’t really affect usage much. Our conversation turns to some of the more charismatic characters of the era with a focus on Billy Sunday, a forerunner of today’s “megachurch” pastors. Barry recounts Rev. Sunday’s life and how he harnessed his athletic fame in the name of evangelization. Billy Sunday’s story is a nice reminder that “media star preachers” are not just a phenomenon of the late 20th century, but emerged in an era when people were becoming increasingly concentrated in cities and mass media such as radio and theater was beoming more common. We also cover some of the more scandal-plagued preachers of the time including Aimee Semple-McPherson, J. Frank Norris, Daddy Grace, and Father Divine, reminding us that there probably is nothing new under the sun. We then take up the topic of the factionalization occuring within Christianity that is going on during this time — fundamentalists vs modernists. We discover that the liberal modernists tended to win these battles, often forcing more fundamentalist groups to break away and form new denominations. Again, this is reminiscent of our current time. The conversation then moves to an interesting puzzle that Barry is still thinking about, which is why the culture wars subsided between the 1930s and (roughly) 1980. We both offer us some speculation on this topic and finish off with additional thoughts about what the culture wars of the 1920s has to tell us about our culture wars today. Recorded: May 2, 2013.