We hypothesize that the religiously orthodox, who are theologically communitarian/authoritarian in seeing individuals as subsumed by a larger community of believers and as subject to timeless divine law, are more likely to value obedience in children over autonomy than are theological modernists, who are theologically individualistic in seeing individuals, not a deity, as the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong. We hypothesize further that differences in moral cosmology (orthodoxy vs. modernism) within faith traditions are more important for the values adults seek to instile in children than are differences between traditions. Through analyses of national data from the 1998 General Social Survey, we find strong confirmation of
both hypotheses. Moral cosmology is the single-most important factor in valuations of obedience and autonomy in children. While evangelical Protestants differ from Catholics, mainline Protestants, and those with no religion in their values for children, moral cosmology is associated with differences in values for children within each of the faith traditions, including evangelical Protestants.We conclude that intra-faith differences in moral cosmology are key in explaining values for children, but have not completely supplanted interfaith differences.From the late 1950s to the early 1990s, Catholics and Protestants as a whole converged in the relative importance they placed upon obedience and autonomy as values to instill in children
We explore two competing approaches to internal religious divisions and their political consequences. The "moral cosmology" approach focuses on religious worldviews. It juxtaposes the religiously orthodox to modernists, arguing that the former are theologically communitarian in belief while the latter are individualistic. The religiously orthodox worldview (relative to modernists) is posited to lead to politically conservative stances on cultural issues of abortion, sexuality, and family but politically liberal stances on economic issues. In contrast, the "subcultural identity" approach focuses on identity rather than worldview. According to this approach, self-identified evangelicals and fundamentalists are expected to be more politically conservative on both cultural and economic issues when compared to mainline or liberal Protestants. Through analyses of the 1998 GSS, which allows operationalization of the two approaches and their extension to Catholic identities, we find that cosmology and identity are associated, but they have independent-and sometimes opposite-effects on Americans' political beliefs.Correspondence should be addressed to Brian Starks,
Through qualitative analyses of 50 in-depth interviews with Catholics in three Midwestern cities, I investigate the role of religious movement organizations in the formation of Catholic identities. I find that movement organizations and elites tend to have little direct impact on the formation of Catholic parishioners' identities in my sample. While movements' disruptions and interactions with media are useful for generating debate and wider recognition of religious disagreements, my respondents are not usually socialized by nor do they identify with familiar movements when they call themselves traditional, moderate, and liberal. Most are uninterested in and unacquainted with movement organizations and publications. Instead, their religious identification is a form of religious mapping, which reflects their self-understood position vis-à-vis recognized cultural conflicts within the larger religious community. While movements play a limited role, I argue that we should be wary of conceptualizing Catholic identities as products of movement groups or parachurch networks since most Catholic identity-work occurs within families and parishes, as opposed to movements or parachurch organizations.Galvanized by the (re)emergence of the Christian Right into politics, researchers have become increasingly interested in politicized religious identities and the consequences of these identities for politics and social change. Robert Wuthnow (1988Wuthnow ( , 1989) studied the emergence of divisions between religious conservatives and liberals since World War II. ) investigated and debated the existence of a culture war between religious progressives and the orthodox of all faiths. In addition, political scientists and sociologists examined various Protestant religious self-identifications, including evangelical, liberal, pentecostal, mainline, and fundamentalist (
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