College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Supernatural Ties: Religious Beliefs and Practices and Commitment and Cohesion in Politics(2024) Rao, Sean Christopher; Cunningham, Kathleen G; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)I propose a general mechanism of religion in politics which is not limited to the use of violent tactics or a particular religious background: religious belief and practice generate strong mutual commitment among individuals in a group and this commitment can, in turn, create political cohesion. This process gives a strong organizational resource to political actors who can successfully link political goals to religious commitment and illuminates three puzzles: first, why do some organizations persist in demanding autonomy or independence for decades while others cease after only a short time? Little is known about the persistence of contentious actors, violent and nonviolent, who may eventually become rebels in a civil war. Linking research on civil war duration, nonviolent contention, and the club model of religion with novel cross-national time series data from a sample of self-determination organizations in Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, and Canada, I find some evidence that organizations based on religion or religion-like ideologies in the sample are more likely to persist. I find stronger evidence that organizations persist when they encourage membership practices (such as religious study or dress codes) through which individual members demonstrate public commitment to the group. Second, why do some politicians offer an overt religious basis for their policies? Overt religious rhetoric can harm a politician’s standing with less religious voters in the United States, and positive stereotypes of religious people are diminishing. Still, even politicians who depend on less religious voters sometimes use overt rhetoric instead of subtler religious cues. In two survey experiments, I find that religious rhetoric does not increase the level of a voter’s confidence that a politician is committed to a noncontroversial policy in an undergraduate sample nor to a controversial policy in a national sample in the United States, but it does increase the probability that a voter becomes completely convinced of a politician’s commitment to a controversial policy, though not among Democrats, nor does visible participation in a congregation affect this signal. Third, what keeps some civil wars from resuming after violence has stopped? Previous research has shown religious civil wars are likely to recur due to time-invariant factors of issue indivisibility and information uncertainty. Using existing data on secessionist rebels from 1975 to 2009, I find evidence that recruitment from religious networks drives recurrence. Giving religious constituencies equal access to political power and reaching formal ceasefires or agreements with territorial rebels discourages rebels from mobilizing that network for a return to fighting and makes them no more likely to return than nonreligious territorial rebels. These results identify a general process of religion applicable across different religious backgrounds and political contexts: cohesion from practices, often related to religion, which allow individuals to signal their commitment to a group. Identifying this process makes the study of religion in politics less context limited giving a starting point for future research.Item Religious belief, religious minorities, and support for democracy(2023) Overos, Henry David; Birnir, Johanna K.; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Over the last two decades, the intersection of religion in politics and democratic backsliding has prompted questions about public support for democracy. This study investigates the link between individual-level religious beliefs, religious minority status, and support for democracy. It presents a modified authoritarian personality theory, proposing that higher religious commitment correlates with stronger support for authoritarianism and weaker support for liberal democracy. This hypothesis is tested using Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and validated through the World Values Survey data. A survey experiment in Indonesia in 2022 examines the impact of minority status on views regarding liberal democracy. The findings indicate that religious commitment is associated with reduced support for liberal democracy, and minority status can affect perspectives on democracy under specific political contexts. Additionally, this research pioneers a large-scale approach to measuring religious experience through clustering analysis. It underscores the need to explore how democracy is perceived differently by diverse segments of the population, adding depth to the study of democratic support.Item THE THEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION OF EVANGELICAL ELITES(2020) Burger, Matthew Joseph; Morris, Iwrin L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This inquiry reassesses the theological and political conservatism of the white evangelical tradition, a settled assumption in the academic and popular literature, in view of changing political rhetoric and priorities among the movement’s mainstream elites. It is contended that: 1) There is growing fragmentation among evangelical elites precipitated by a departure from the hallmarks of evangelical theological orthodoxy in a liberal direction by some elites. 2) Four distinct elite types have emerged from this theological fragmentation with distinct theological assumptions and characteristics, including, traditional evangelicals, marketers, emergents, and unmoored marketers. 3) Given the relationship between theology and politics (Green 2010), less theologically orthodox evangelical elite types should also exhibit less conservative political attitudes and behaviors. 4) The emergence of politically progressive social justice priorities among mainstream evangelical elites do not represent an inconsequential adjustment in political rhetoric, nor merely a broadening of the evangelical political agenda. (Pally 2011; Rogers and Heltzel 2008; Steenland and Goff 2014) Rather, it evinces real changes in the theological commitments of these elites that manifest in real changes for their politics. Employing pastor interviews, content analysis of sermons, and the examination of congregation-specific media, this study finds substantial evidence of theological liberalism among a significant segment of evangelical elites that is strongly correlated with a politically leftward migration in the personal political attitudes and behavior of pastors as well as the political priorities they advance in their congregations. Likewise, there is persuasive evidence that this liberalization is driving fragmentation among evangelical elites suggesting a future schism within the movement. It is argued, however, that the changing theological and political commitments of many evangelical elites is unlikely to produce large changes in the partisanship or voting behavior of those in the pews. Nevertheless, these findings do have important implications for how evangelicals are measured in survey research, the relationship between evangelicals and the Republican Party, and evangelical exceptionalism (Smith 1998) to the numerical decline experienced by other religious traditions. Indeed, it is contended that liberal evangelical elites, like their liberal mainline brethren, may increasingly be catechizing those in the pews to become religious “nones”.Item ‘DON’T TELL ME YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE!’ A QUALITATIVE PORTRAIT OF BLACK ATHEISTS(2017) Swann, Daniel; Marsh, Kris; Collins, Patricia H; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Black Atheists are one of the least studied and understood populations in American society. Drawing on literature from the sociology of religion, social psychology, and critical race theory, my research focuses on the following questions: Is there a meaningful ‘Black Atheist’ identity? And if there is, how do people who claim a Black Atheist identity conceive of it? How does this identity relate to the way in which they live their lives? To explore these questions, this project aims to understand what it means to be a Black Atheist in America through in-depth open-ended qualitative interviews with 46 Black Atheists in the Washington DC/Baltimore area. This includes but is not limited to investigating and understanding Black Atheist identities, how Black Atheists conceive of themselves, how they perceive, internalize, and manage stigma, how they view in-group belonging, and how they understand their experiences as Atheists to be racialized. This project addresses the paucity of information on Black Atheists in America by investigating and centralizing their experiences, lives, and identities. The results suggest that Black Atheists do indeed perceive themselves as holding a unique ‘Black Atheist’ identity. That is, they believe their being Black, and their being Atheist, inform each other in meaningful ways that affect their beliefs, behaviors, and lived experiences. Additionally, respondents described both an identity and emerging social space informed by the particular sets of challenges and racialized cultural and social pressures they face. Namely, they perceived pervasive and intense racialized stigma against Atheists within Black communities and often their own families, and also feel social distance from Mainstream Atheists, whom they perceive to be inattentive to the particular challenges faced by Black Atheists. Respondents also linked being Black Atheists to the way that they navigated familial relationships, romantic relationships, and broader communal spaces, engaging in significant amounts of stigma management. Most commonly this was done through use of the closet, which proved to be a significant social space for respondents. Additionally, there were potentially significant gendered ways in which respondents made sense of their identities, and linked them to the external world. In essence, the way stigma in America interacts with identity seemingly produces distinctive identities at this particular intersection of race and religion. Because they reside at the bottom of two separate hierarchies, namely, Atheists are at the bottom of religious hierarchies, while Blacks are at the bottom of racial hierarchies, identity work and behavioral strategies in the face of stigma are likely to be particularly pronounced among Black Atheists.Item "The voice of duty is the voice of God": The spatial manifestation of the religious duty of health in Seventh-day Adventism(2017) Burtch, Nathan R.; Geores, Martha; Geography; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Seventh-day Adventists are a millennial Christian denomination that traces its lineage to the Millerites of the mid-nineteenth century. Among the various theological differences espoused by Adventism is a predilection towards healthful living and providing healthcare services to those in need; a religious duty of health. This research studies the intersection of religious behavior, health, and space within Adventism. A content analysis of the writings of Ellen G. White, a particularly important voice in the creation of Adventism, demonstrates that healthful practice is a religious duty. This religious duty towards health can be categorized as both an individual and an institutional duty; adherents themselves have duties towards health, as well Adventist institutions have duties of healthcare provision. To understand how religious duty interacts with space, a model of spatialization of duty is constructed. Extending upon Lefebvre’s spatial triad, religious duty is theorized to meet with an individual’s agency of belief within a filter of space. Religious duty therefore manifests spatially through the construction of a dutyscape, or a landscape spatially constructed around duty. The terms religious space and sacred space are defined to clarify difference. Religious space is social space that establishes a connection between the physical and metaphysical realms, while sacred space is personal space in which the connection between the physical and metaphysical is experienced. Both types of space can manifest through a filter of space as dutyscapes. Adventist spaces of healing are assessed in the context of existing therapeutic landscapes literature and the model of the construction of dutyscapes. This research shows that the Adventist institutional duties of health manifest as a worldwide dutyscape of hospitals. Additionally, a content analysis of YouTube videos published by Adventist healthcare institutions, in conjunction with a narrative interview with an employee of Adventist HealthCare, demonstrates that these religious duties are still current to Adventist spaces of health. The spatial manifestation of these religious duties make Adventist hospitals religious spaces, and give the potential to create sacred spaces when individuals experience a connection with the metaphysical within the constructed spaces of care.Item NATIONALISM DURING ARMED CONFLICT: A STUDY OF IDEOLOGY AND IDENTITY IN THE BOSNIAN WAR, 1992-1995(2017) Zic, Borjan; Lichbach, Mark; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation asks when and why leaders and members of ethno-religious groups choose to express one type of nationalist ideology and ethnic identity during armed conflict instead of another. It argues that patterns of wartime violence and external actors play direct and indirect roles in making certain forms of nationalism and ethnic identity more useful for dealing with wartime circumstances. The dissertation advances this argument by joining together four independent empirical chapters. Each empirical chapter has its own research question, its own dependent variable, and its own theoretical argument. All four chapters focus on one ethno-religious group in conflict: the Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s war in Bosnia. Methodologically, I apply statistical analysis to an original dataset of over 3,700 speech acts by Bosnian Muslim leaders of the wartime Bosnian government in order to explain why the frequency and form of their wartime nationalist rhetoric varied. I also employ historical evidence and qualitative text analysis to reveal the mechanisms underlying the statistical relationships. In addition, one of the empirical chapters analyzes survey data to explain why, following the war, some Bosnian Muslims supported politicians that made religious appeals. Using this approach, the dissertation finds the following results. First, intense violence against the predominantly Bosnian Muslim population of wartime Sarajevo prompted the Bosnian Muslim leaders of the Bosnian government to use nationalist ideological claims more frequently in domestic media. Second, contingent wartime events spurred these leaders to shift their rhetoric in domestic media from civic to ethnic nationalism in the second year of the war. Specifically, internal power struggles and external peace proposals increased the usefulness of making ethnic nationalist claims to domestic audiences. Third, Bosnian leaders’ need for external aid combined with their uncertain likelihood of receiving Western military support led them to use both civic and religious nationalist rhetoric in foreign media. Fourth, Bosnian Muslims who experienced internal displacement during the war became more religious as a means of coping with the trauma of displacement, which in turn made them more likely to vote for religiously oriented politicians after the conflict.Item New Wine Calls for New Wineskins: Black Megachurch Approaches to Racial Inequality(2015) Barber, Kendra Hadiya; Hill Collins, Patricia; Marsh, Kris; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The changing nature of racism in the post-Civil Rights period coincides with the decline in collective racial protest, or what some scholars consider the activist or prophetic wing, of black churches. As a result of the shift from the overt racism of the Civil Rights era to the hidden and often invisible forms of contemporary racism, the ways in which blacks address and resist racism might reflect similar shifts. In other words, I argue that black churches’ responses to contemporary racial inequality may be different from the actions taken by some churches before and during the pre-Civil Rights era. This study seeks to explore the explanations and solutions for contemporary racial inequality offered by black megachurch leaders and attendees. More specifically it also takes into account how religious culture may influence these explanations of and solutions to racial inequality. A case study approach is utilized to examine three black megachurches in Washington, D.C.—one Baptist, one Pentecostal, and one nondenominational. Data from semi-structured interviews with church leaders and congregants, content analysis of church documents, and participant observation of church worship services reveal three main findings. First, contrary to literature that states blacks tend to rely on structural rather than individual explanations of racial inequality, church leaders and congregants tend to rely on explanations that are simultaneously individual and structural. Second, the strategies used by the megachurches in this study do not reflect the direct action protesting strategies used by some black churches during the Civil Rights Movement. The strategies of the megachurches in this study to address racial inequality range from aiding in educational achievement to civic engagement to employment training to address racial inequality. Furthermore, each of the churches has developed nonprofit Community Development Corporations to provide social services such as transitional housing. Third, although the various religious cultures of megachurches in this study inform how they address racial inequality, other factors, such as declining membership and changing community demographics, also shape strategies to intervene in racial inequality.Item Reinhold Niebuhr and an Ethic of Humility in Deliberative Politics(2014) Spino, Matthew Peter; Glass, James; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the degree to which the political psychology of Reinhold Niebuhr contributes to a more capacious theory of deliberative politics and to what degree such a theory may permit individuals to express themselves with more workable forms of democratic practice. Considerations of Reinhold Niebuhr's understanding of impermanence, anxiety, self-reflection, and empathy borne of humility guide the framework of the argument in that they inform and augment individual political preferences. The author uses these ideas to develop a theory of deliberative politics built upon the empathetic tendencies found in the self-scrutinizing humility of Reinhold Niebuhr's politics. The author considers this theory in contradistinction to ascendant strains in political theory and theologies of public life, which at times may disavowal Niebuhr's understanding of natural theology, his correspondent political realism, or otherwise miscategorize Niebuhr's political claims. The degree to which Niebuhr's ethical framework can or should be separated from Christian considerations of ethics more broadly, especially from Christian eschatology, is a major topic of discussion. Contrasting Niebuhr with other Christian ethicists permits us to see in what manner Niebuhr's political psychology might retain political value beyond a particular religious community. This work also considers limits of Niebuhr's understanding of liberal politics, and whether an ethic of humility can be overly disempowering at times. Tension between individual and aggregate political perspectives frames that discussion.Item UNPACKING INCLUSION, TRACING POLITICAL VIOLENCE: A CASE STUDY OF THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY AND HAMAS`S GOVERNANCE UNDER OCCUPATION(2011) Al-Madbouh, Ghada; Butterworth, Charles E; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation seeks to unpack inclusion and to trace a causal path by which a certain type of inclusion (exclusive inclusion) is linked to the deployment of political violence by incorporated opposition. In doing so, I challenge the assumptions of the inclusion-moderation nexus and its applicability to less institutionalized competitive authoritarianism. I undertake in-depth comparative case studies in two sectors in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: the Civil Security Sector (CSS) and the Palestinian Security Sector (PSS), where evidence shows that the inclusion of Hamas led to political violence rather than moderation. Based on this study I argue that unpacking inclusion into two components, namely open contestation and ostensible power sharing, is essential to account for the complex interactions between authority-incorporated groups and political violence. Open contestation and ostensible power sharing lead to various levels of what I call ―exclusive inclusion‖ in the CSS and the PSS (and in all institutions). Exclusive inclusion captures Fatah incumbents‘ formal and informal practices and manipulations, along with colonial policies and external interferences. Second, I argue that exclusive inclusion triggers two major internal dimensions - the intermixed approach of incorporated opposition and the intra-group divergence – which significantly shape the deployment of political violence. Improved conditions of exclusive inclusion brought some entitlements back to Hamas‘s officials in the CSS over time and left some margin for them to practice their intermixed approach (resistance and accommodation with authorities). This occurred while increasingly exclusive inclusion and denial of Hamas‘s demands in the PSS not only made the continuous exercise of an intermixed approach from within the PA unfeasible, but also led to divergences among currents inside Hamas. Third, intra-Hamas divergences mean the development of various trends within Hamas, despite its unity, each of which had developed different attributions of threats and expected payoffs of exclusive inclusion in the PSS. In conclusion, the continuous exclusive inclusion in the PSS, along with intradivergences and the absence of power arrangement outside the security institution, were fertile opportunities for the deployment of political violence against PSS. However, contingent events under sanctions, led to the extension of violence and takeover of the Strip.Item "Priestesses Unto the Most High God": LDS Women's Temple Rituals and the Politics of Religious Identity(2011) Kane, Nazneen; Hill Collins, Patricia; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study enters into broader debates surrounding the study of women in traditional religions by examining the ways in which LDS women utilize temple ritual in the ongoing production of religious identity. In-depth interviews with eighteen LDS women are explored to highlight themes in LDS women's perspectives regarding temple rituals. I demonstrate that LDS women's perspectives on these ceremonies reveal that LDS women draw from an amalgam of competing dominant, alternative, and oppositional discourses to define their religious experiences and identities. These self-definitions revealed that the women in this study drew from ritual symbols, gestures, images, and dialogue to shift normative definitions of LDS women as mothers who bear and raise children to more expansive identities as "priestesses unto the most high God." I argue that examining the practices of women in traditional religions reveals hidden layers of their experiences, identities, and ways of knowing.