SSSR Newsletter 2021 #1

President’s Letter

I am thrilled to have the privilege of writing the first letter from the President for the SSSR newsletter. I have long wanted to see a newsletter for SSSR and I am very grateful to the new SSSR Communications Committee led by Brie Loskota for making this possible! Newsletters are important in creating community and in showcasing a field, in this case, social science work on religion. I hope many more of you will continue to submit your list of publications and other professional achievements to the newsletter for subsequent issues. We plan to have two issues a year.  

The Communications Committee and newsletter are one of the products of SSSR’s strategic plan developed in 2018 by Korie Little Edwards, the organization’s first Black president. SSSR committed $100,000 to this plan that has put into place a variety of policies since 2019 to diversify SSSR and to create an inclusive and welcoming community for all social science scholars of religion, including international scholars and scholars of color. This includes initiatives such as creating pathways for SSSR leadership for all members, including methods training and professional development sessions at SSSR meetings, creating a mentoring program, increasing the number of SSSR members who are people of color, non-sociologists, and from countries other than the U.S. and Canada, and greater public engagement (e.g., through the SSSR newsletter) to highlight the work of SSSR members. 

What a year it has been for all of us! Covid completely transformed the lives of most people around the world, resulting in millions of deaths and much larger numbers of people who fell seriously ill, some with long term impacts to their health. Then there were the sensational U.S. elections, as well as the racial mobilizations and protests. Our virtual pre-conference sessions dealt with how religion impacts each of these issues and much more. If you have not watched the three sessions we hope you will take a look at them (https://sssreligion.org/annual-meeting/virtual-events/). 

The pre-conference sessions were organized around the conference theme for this year—Global and Comparative Perspectives on Religion. In addition to the Presidential address, the conference will feature several special sessions around the theme including one on Religion and Climate Change from a variety of religious traditions and regions of the world, two exciting panels on Religion and Asian American Hate (including one specifically focused on South Asian Americans), and finally, the Presidential Panel on Challenging and Expanding Paradigms of the Scientific Study of Religion.   

We look forward to our in-person conference this year and the opportunity to catch up with all of you in Portland, particularly since last year’s conference was cancelled.  

A big welcome to our new Executive Officer, Karen Hutchison, who will be organizing the conference with able help from the Program Chairs for this year, Andrea Henderson, and Aida Ramos, as well as Tricia Bruce who has been providing us with additional help for the conference. This has been a particularly difficult year and the burden of dealing with all the new challenges for SSSR has fallen on the four of them. I am deeply grateful for their cheerful work and support!  

Warm regards,
Prema Kurien
SSSR President

 

Announcing the New JSSR Editor-in-Chief

We are excited to welcome a new Editor-in-Chief for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Korie Little Edwards, PhD! Dr. Little Edwards is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ohio State University and former SSSR President. Under her leadership, SSSR engaged in a process of Strategic Planning that continues to guide our efforts today. Please also welcome new Associate Editors Andrea Henderson, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of South Carolina, and Aida Ramos, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Mary-Hardin Baylor, as well as Ruth Powell, PhD, Director of NCLS Research and Associate Professor, Charles Sturt University, Australia, who will serve as Book Review Editor. Dr. Little Edwards and team will assume their positions on January 1, 2022.  We thank our outgoing Editor-in-Chief, Tobin Grant, PhD, as well as Associate Editor Jerry Park, PhD, and Book Review Editor Sally Gallagher, PhD, for their years of service to JSSR.

Welcome Our New Executive Officer

Please welcome Karen Hutchison, CAE, M.A., who will take over as SSSR's Executive Officer starting May 1, 2021. Karen has an M.A. from George Washington University and is an association management professional with more than 20 years of experience. She is also the long-time Executive Director of the Society for Historical Archaeology. We thank our outgoing Executive Officer, Roman Williams, PhD, for his years of service and contributions to SSSR.

Our new contact information is:
Society for the Scientific Study of Religion
13017 Wisteria Drive #455
Germantown, MD 20874
(301) 972-9641

Conference update

We are very happy to finally be able to share with you that we are proceeding with an in-person annual meeting in Portland, Oregon in October.  Our Portland hotel is prepared to follow COVID-19 protocols in existence in October to ensure our safety and well being while hosting us. Since the pandemic infection rates, hospitalizations, and vaccine rates have greatly improved in the U.S., we hope many of you can join us particularly as we were not able to meet last year. We would love to see you in the Rose City so we can take in the beauty of the Pacific Northwest together!

We understand that some of you are only able to attend a virtual conference (for a variety of reasons) so we will offer a virtual component to the conference the weekend before our in-person conference. A limited number of sessions will be offered via Zoom during the virtual pre-conference. Unfortunately, we will not be able to provide a virtual option during the in-person conference since the hotel does not have the technology for a hybrid conference (i.e., video recording in each conference room). Those who attend the virtual conference will not be able to have access to our in-person conference. However, those who register for the in-person conference will have access to the virtual component as well.

We strongly encourage those of you, who are able to travel, to attend our in-person conference. This will provide access to all our sessions, enable you to meet and interact with everyone in person, and enjoy all the other benefits of an in-person conference. Also, please consider staying at the Portland Hilton with us to take advantage of the conference room rate as well as help fill the SSSR+RRA room block. Even if you indicated you can only attend a virtual conference when you submitted your abstract, you may switch to an in-person option during registration.  All those whose sessions and paper abstracts were accepted must register by July 15 to stay on the program.

Prema Kurien                          Andrea Henderson and Aida Ramos
SSSR President                       SSSR Program Chairs 

Member Spotlight: Nazita Lajevardi

SSSR member Nazita Lajevardi is a political scientist studying political behavior and attitudes, primarily through the lens of religious identity. Her research on political discrimination against Muslim Americans offers an interdisciplinary and comparative examination of the political consequences of marginalization. Lajevardi’s 2020 Cambridge University Press book, Outsiders at Home: The Politics of American Islamophobia, focuses on one broad question: to what extent do Muslim Americans face discrimination by legislators, the media, and masses? As such, it provides the first comprehensive analysis of Muslims in the United States, and shows that the rampant, mostly negative discussion of Muslims in the media and national discourse has yielded devastating political and social consequences for the group writ large. 

Moving forward, her work on American Muslims consists of three core questions: First, does exposure to diverse political leadership inclusive of Muslims empower the Muslim voter base to politically participate more and become active in politics themselves? Second, is extremist social media discourse online related to offline hate crimes against American Muslims? When might they increase and when might they fade? Finally, in what ways does the closeness and quality of interpersonal contact with American Muslims matter for improving policy and group attitudes about them?

Council Member Spotlight: Richard Pitt

Council member Richard N Pitt (PhD, University of Arizona, 2003) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California San Diego. His research in religion tends to focus on social identity, professions, gender and sexuality, and race. His forthcoming book, Church Planters: Inside The World Of Religion Entrepreneurs (Oxford University Press) uses interviews with church planters to examine why clergy start new congregations in a country where many people—now 26% of us—are moving away from organized, affiliative religion. He explains what motivates them to create the church and, on the back end, what motivates the persistence of founders of objectively “unsuccessful” congregations. A statistical analysis of this population using the National Congregations Study has been published in the Review of Religious Research. His first book, Divine Callings (NYU Press), looked at the call to ministry among Black Pentecostals. His new project, Reconsidering “Religious Affiliation” In Postsecondary Contexts, analyzes the ways religious student organization involvement on college campuses serves as a bridging mechanism between pre-college and post-college religiosity. Pitt argues that these organizations become substitutes for congregational affiliation in the religion deserts many students face in college towns. Pitt’s work has been published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Review of Religious Research, and the Journal of Homosexuality and has been funded by the Ford Foundation, Louisville Institute, and the National Science Foundation.  An award-winning teacher, he was recently named the 2021 Sankofa Scholar by Emory University’s Candler School of Theology and taught a well-regarded course there on the Sociology of the Black Church. 

SSSR Member News, Awards, Books and Articles

Thank you all for submitting your updates for our inaugural newsletter.  We endeavored to include as many as we could.  Please forgive us for any unintended errors as we compiled these submissions.  Also, please note that we only included publications in the calendar year for 2020.  Future newsletters will include publications from 2021.

Awards, Honors, and Accolades

Cory Anderson received a two-year NIH T32 Postdoctoral Fellow of Population Health and Social Environments at Pennsylvania State University's Population Research Institute and a $15,000 pilot grant to study Amish aging, from The Interdisciplinary Network on Rural Population Health and Aging

Professor Eileen Barker, London School of Economics received an ASR Lifetime Achievement Award

Gail Cafferata’s book The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Closing Church received the 2021 Illuminations Silver Medal in the area of ministry/mission.

John Calvin Chatlos, MD Professor of Psychiatry Rutgers University NJ    was promoted to Professor of Psychiatry, Rutgers University, NJ

Maureen K. Day received a Teaching Fellowship, 2020-2021 ($5,000) “Integrating Teaching and Research to Foster Student Engagement: A Case in Ethics and Sociology” Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion, and served as a consultant, June-July 2020 ($10,000) “Catholic Sisters and Human Development on the US/Mexico Border” Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Ecklund, Elaine Howard, PI (Denise Daniels, Co-PI), “The Impact of COVID-19 and Racism on Faith at Work,” Lilly Endowment, Inc. ($301,734, #2020-1655). 2021-2022, 

Rachel Ellis, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland received a Russell Sage Foundation Pipeline Grant

Arthur Farnsley, Research Professor, IUPUI, was awarded a Lilly Endowment Inc. grant for a study of congregations in Indianapolis and will serve as co-PI on the grant. 

Richard Flory, USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture received a grant to support “Reimagining Church: Developing Thriving Congregations in Southern California.” from the Lilly Endowment $1,000,000. 

Ilana Horowitz was appointed as an Assistant Professor and the Fields-Rayant Chair of Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane University and received a $1500 research grant from the Association for Social Scientific Study of Jewry.

Motti Inbari, Professor, UNC Pembroke received $15,000 in grants for the study of Christian Zionism: UNCP ($6,000), Chosen People Ministries ($5,000), Academic Engagement Network ($4,000).

Andre E. Johnson, University of Memphis has been appointed Scholar in Residence: Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change and named Scholar of the Year: Religious Communication Association.  He also received The Fine Arts, Humanities, & Social Science Pilot Program: University of Memphis Professional Indexing Grant for the manuscript, No Future in this Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner 

Blake Victor Kent began a tenure-track position in sociology at Westmont College.  He also received a three-year subcontract with the National Consortium on Psychosocial Stress, Spirituality, and Health at Harvard Medical School and a Westmont faculty development grant to examine theological themes in Christian nationalism.

Ariela Keysar and Barry A. Kosmin received the 2021 Marshall Sklare Award for their individual and joint work, which constitutes a significant scholarly contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry.

Stanley Krippner received the Laura Huxley Award for Services to the Visionary Community

Prema Kurien, Professor of Sociology, Syracuse University, received an Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award, Syracuse University and a grant from the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC) Mini-Grant Program. “The Political Incorporation of Religious Minorities in Canada and the U.S.” $ 2,400

Cameron Mackey, Doctoral Student, Ohio University received a APA Division 36 (Religion and Spirituality) Research Seed Grant

Gerardo Marti Consulting Editor, Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review, January 2021 – December 2021. Appointed to third term on Board of Directors, The Louisville Institute, funded by Lilly Endowment. Joined Board of Directors, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), Washington, DC. 

Michael Nielsen, Georgia Southern University “I am pleased to have been promoted from Department Chair to Faculty. This move will allow me to work more closely with students and, I hope, to do more research.”

Lisa Pearce, Z.T. Smith Distinguished Term Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was awarded a Louisville Institute Project Grant for Researchers for a project entitled, "Racism Rebuked and Reproduced in Church: How American Gigachurches Responded to the Killing of George Floyd."

J. Michael Ryan and Helen Rizzo (editors). 2020. Gender in the Middle East and North Africa: Contemporary Issues and Challenges was selected as a 2020 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. It was among 531 books and digital resources chosen by the CHOICE editorial staff from among the over 3,500 titles reviewed by Choice in 2020.

Adrian Schiffbeck began a new position as a research assistant at the Department of Political Science, West University of Timisoara (Romania)

Paul-André TURCOTTE serves as a member of the comitato scientifico per la collana Modernità e società, Armando Editore in Rome, Italy 

Peter J. Verhagen, psychiatrist,  MD PhD; GGz Centraal Mental Health Institution, Harderwijk, The Netherlands was appointed as extraordinary professor at KU Leuven, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, Leuven, Belgium (effective 1 September 2021)

Brandon Vaidyanathan, Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology, The Catholic University of America, received an honorable mention, 2020 Distinguished Book Award, American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Religion in addition to a $2.17M grant from Templeton Religion Trust for “Global Research on the Aesthetic Dimensions of Science."

Books

BARKER, Eileen. & RICHARDSON, James T. (eds.) 2021. Reactions to the Law by Minority Religions, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 

The Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion (2 vols.), ed. Adam Possamai and Anthony J. Blasi. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 2020. 

The Abuse of Minors in the Catholic Church: Dismantling the Culture of Cover Ups, ed. Anthony J. Blasi and Lluis Oviedo. Oxford: Routledge, 2020, 249 pp. Contribution by Blasi, “From Causes toward Stratagems and Theological Considerations.”  Eight contributors, including Jay R. Fierman, Lluis Oviedo, Anthony J. Pogorelc, and Anthony J. Blasi. 

Warren Bird Better Together: Making Church Mergers Work, expanded and updated edition, Jim Tomberlin and Warren Bird, foreword by Craig Groeschel, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2020. 

Warren Bird. Next: Pastoral Succession that Works, expanded and updated edition. William Vanderbloemen and Warren Bird, forewords by John Ortberg, Kenton Beshore and Eric Geiger, Baker. 2020. 

Gail Cafferata, The Last Pastor: Faithfully Steering a Closing Church Westminster John Knox Press (January 21, 2020)

Roberto Cipriani. Un’indagine quanti-qualitativa in Italia, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2020.

Roberto Cipriani La religione dei valori diffusi. Intervista qualitativa e approccio misto di analisi, FrancoAngeli, Milano, 2020, co-authored with Maria Paola Faggiano and Maria Paola Piccini.

Maureen Day Catholic Activism Today: Individual Transformation and the Struggle for Social Justice

Melinda Lundquist Denton and Richard Flory.  Back Pocket God: Religion and Spirituality in the Lives of Emerging Adults (Oxford University Press, 2020). 

Ecklund, Elaine Howard. 2020. Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us beyond Fear. Grand Rapids, MI: BrazosPress. 

Jonathan Fox Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me: Why Governments Discriminate against Religious Minorities, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Johnson, Andre E. “No Future in this Country:” The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner. University Press of Mississippi, (2020)

Stanley Krippner, Linda Riebel, Debbie Joffe Ellis, Daryl S. Paulson Understanding Suicide's Allure: Steps to Save Lives by Healing Psychological Scars Praeger (April 30, 2020)

Mirjam Künkler and Tine Stein (eds.): Religion, Law, and Democracy. Selected Writings by Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde. Oxford University Press, 2020. 

Gerardo Martí. 2020. American Blindspot: Race, Class, Religion, and the Trump Presidency. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield. 

Mark T. Mulder and Gerardo Martí. 2020. The Glass Church: Robert H. Schuller, The Crystal Cathedral, and the Strain of Megachurch Ministry. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Pearce, Lisa D. and Claire Chipman Gilliland. 2020. Religion in America. Oakland: University of California Press. (Claire Chipman Gilliland is also a SSSR member) 

Ryan, J. Michael and Helen Rizzo (editors). 2020. Gender in the Middle East and North Africa: Contemporary Issues and Challenges. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. 

Articles in the Popular Press

Roberto Cipriani “Diffused Religion. Beyond Secularization”, Scholarly Community Encyclopedia, on line, https://encyclopedia.pub/703  

Roberto Cipriani, “Body and biology”, Academicus, 21, 2020, pp. 46-52. 

Ecklund, Elaine Howard, and Rachel C. Schneider. “How White Churches Can Work for Racial Justice,” Religion News Service, June 19, 2020 https://religionnews.com/2020/06/19/how-white-churches-can-work-for-racial-justice/ 

Ecklund, Elaine Howard, and Deidra Carroll Coleman. “It’s Hard to Close Black Churches amid COVID-19,” Christianity Today, March 24, 2020 https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/march-web-only/coronavirus-hard-to-close-black-churches-amid-covid-19.html  

Richard Flory “Jerry Falwell Jr. will leave behind a very different legacy from his influential father” in The Conversation, August 26, 2020. https://bit.ly/FalwellJr_legacy  

Blake Victor Kent “What Have We Learned about Religion, Spiritualty, and Health in the MASALA Study of U.S. South Asians?” Public Health, Religion, and Spirituality Bulletin 1(3):18-20. https://www.publichealthrs.org/a016/ 

Brie Loskota "Why Crisis Response Efforts Need Religious Literacy," The Aspen Institute, December 2, 2020. https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/why-crisis-response-efforts-need-religious-literacy/?fbclid=IwAR1cyv96RNbi4_ozZshxsf0yKqPQJaCeRAv6eV5W1D1NIoZXOCpEZuleSN0 

Brie Loskota  "COVID-19: The essential problem with state-faith relations," with Najuma Smith-Pollard, The Hill, September 4, 2020. https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/515111-covid-19-the-essential-problem-with-state-faith-relations?rnd=1599231307 

Aliza Luft  “Vichy’s Family Separation Policy, and Our Own.” Blog post published on Scatterplot, 20202 https://scatter.wordpress.com/2020/10/18/vichys-family-separation-policy-and-our-own/ 

Cameron Mackey, “Social identity threat predicts the concealment of nonreligious identity, study finds” PsyPost, May 22, 2020

https://www.psypost.org/2020/05/social-identity-threat-predicts-the-concealment-of-nonreligious-identity-study-finds-56832  (Kimberly Rios, Christopher Silver, and Ralph W. Hood Jr., SSSR members, were all involved in the publication of this article)

Gustavo Morello ‘Entrevista a Gustavo Morello. La íntima relación entre los tatuajes y la religión en América Latina’, Revista Galeria, Semanario Búsqueda, Montevideo Uruguay, December 17. 2020 

Elizabeth Sciupac Podrebarac and Philip Schwadel. “U.S. Teens Take After Their Parents Religiously, Attend Services Together and Enjoy Family Rituals.” Pew Research Center. Available at: https://www.pewforum.org/2020/09/10/u-s-teens-take-after-their-parents-religiously-attend-services-together-and-enjoy-family-rituals/ 

Joseph Yi. “Religious freedom and COVID-19 epidemic” Korea Times, (March 15, 2020) https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2020/06/161_285621.html  

Articles in the Scholarly Press

Ammerman, Nancy T. "Rethinking Religion: Toward a Practice Approach." American Journal of Sociology 126, no. 1 (2020): 6-51. 

Ammerman, Nancy T. "The Many Meanings of Nonaffiliation." In Empty Churches: Non-Affiliation in America, edited by James L. Heft and Jan E. Stets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

Anderson, Cory, and Lindsey Potts. 2020. "The Amish Health Culture and Culturally Sensitive Health Services: An Exhaustive Narrative Review." Social Science & Medicine 265:113466. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113466 

Anderson, Cory, and Lee Decker. 2020. "Evaluation and Revision of an Instrument Measuring Attitudes toward the Amish." Journal of Applied Social Science 14(2):195-211.https://doi.org/10.1177/1936724420947339

BARKER, E. 2020. Denominationalization or Death? A comparative examination of processes of change within the Jesus Fellowship Church and the Children of God aka The Family International In: STAUSBERG, M., WRIGHT, S. A. & CUSACK, C. M. (eds.) The Demise of Religion: How Religions End, Die, or Dissipate. London: Bloomsbury.

BARKER, E. 2020. Entries of Children of God; Scientology; Unification Church; Peoples Temple; Hare Krishnas; New Religious Movements; and Freedom of Religion. In: POSSAMAI, A. & BLASI, A. J. (eds.) The Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion. Thousand Oaks, CA; London: Sage.

Bernau, John A. 2021. “From Christ to Compassion: The Changing Language of Pastoral Care.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion x:x-xx.https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12711

Anthony J. Blasi, Olga Breskaya, and Giuseppe Giordan, “Religious freedom and microsociology of law: Thinking with Georges Gurvitch.” Sociologia. Rivista Quadrimestrale di Scienze Storiche e Sociali 54:3 (2020): 44-51. 

Brauner-Otto, Sarah R. and Lisa D. Pearce. 2020. “The Gendered Relationship between Parental Religiousness and Children’s Marriage Timing,” Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 81(4):413-38.

Cafferata, G.L. Gender, Judicatory Respect and Pastors’ Wellbeing in Closing Churches. Review of Religious Research. June 2020: 369. doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00414-1 

John Calvin Chatlos, "A Framework of Spirituality for the Future of Naturalism" Zygon, open access, 12/2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12670  

Sabri Ciftci Islamist parties, intraparty organizational dynamics, and moderation as strategic behaviour, Mediterranean Politics (with Mike Wuthrich), DOI: 10.1080/13629395.2020.1790165 https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2020.1790165

Roberto Cipriani “Visual Sociology”, in Possamai, Blasi (eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion, Sage, London, 2020, vol. 2, pp. 895-8. 

Roberto Cipriani  “Diffused Religion”, in Possamai, Blasi (eds.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion, Sage, London, 2020, vol. 1, pp. 214-16.

Coley, Jonathan S. 2020. “Reframing, Reconciling, and Individualizing: How LGBTQ Activist
Groups Shape Approaches to Religion and Sexuality.” Sociology of Religion 81(1): 45-67. https://academic.oup.com/socrel/article/81/1/45/5585875

Coley, Jonathan. 2020. “Have Christian Colleges and Universities Become More Inclusive of LGBTQ Students Since Obergefell v. Hodges?” Religions 11(9), article 461. https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/9/461 

Madeleine Cousineau, “Still Opting for the Poor: The Brazilian Catholic Church and the National Movement of the Street Population.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59,4 (Winter 2020): 586-605. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jssr.12678 

Day, Maureen K. and Linda M. Kawentel. 2021. “Unity and Diversity: Frames of Catholicity Among Catholic Campus Ministers.” Review of Religious Research 63(1), 23-42. doi: 10.1007/s13644-020-00424-z 

Day, Maureen K. 2020. “Latinx Catholic Financial Giving and Clergy Responses: Understanding Stewardship Frames.” American Catholic Studies 131(2), 1-24. 

Day, Maureen K. and Barbara McCrabb. 2020. “Integrating Ministerial Visions: Findings from Catholic Campus Ministry.” Religions 11(12), 642, 1-9. doi: 10.3390/rel11120642

Scheitle, Christopher P., and Elaine Howard Ecklund. 2020. “Individuals’ Experiences with Religious Hostility, Discrimination, and Violence: Findings from a New National Survey.” Socius 6:1-15. Link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120967815. 

Ecklund, Elaine Howard, Denise Daniels, and Rachel C. Schneider. 2020. “From Secular to Sacred: Bringing Work to Church.” Religions 11(9):442. Link: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/11/9/442. 

Ellis, Rachel. 2020. “Redemption and Reproach: Religion and Carceral Control in Action among Women in Prison.” Criminology 58(4):747-772. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9125.12258

Ferguson, Todd W. (2020) “Whose Bodies? Bringing Gender into Interaction Ritual Chains.” Sociology of Religion. 81(3): 247-271. 

Ferguson, Todd W. (2020) “Organizational Resources and the Gender Gap in Congregational Lay Leadership.” Sociological Forum. 35(1): 126-144.

Fincham, F.D., & May, R.W. (2020). Divine, interpersonal and self-forgiveness: Independently related to depressive symptoms? Journal of Positive Psychology, 15, 448-454. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1639798  

Fincham, F.D., May, R.W. & Carlos Chavez, F.L. (2020). Does being religious lead to greater self-forgiveness? Journal of Positive Psychology, 15, 400-406. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1615109 

Horwitz, I. (2020). A Review of the Literature: Religious Stratification in Academic Performance and Educational Attainment. Review of Religious Research. https://doi-org.stanford.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00433-y  

Horwitz, I., Domingue, B., Harris, K.M. (2020). Not a Family Matter: The Effects of Religiosity on Academic Outcomes Based on Evidence from Siblings. Social Science Research, 88-89, 102426 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2020.102426  

Andre Johnson (2020). Taking the Inward Journey: Prophetic Rhetoric's Listening Function. 55. 151-159.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351327420_Taking_the_Inward_Journey_Prophetic_Rhetoric's_Listening_Function   

Johnson, Andre. (2020). MLK and the Meeting That Never Was: Race, Racism, and the Negation of the Beloved Community. 43. 9-17. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347956446_MLK_and_the_Meeting_That_Never_Was_Race_Racism_and_the_Negation_of_the_Beloved_Community 

Johnson, Andre & Listach, Natonya. (2020). "Women Step Forward!": Doing Rhetorical Historiography by Exploring Womanist Leadership in the AME Church. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348974801_Women_Step_Forward_Doing_Rhetorical_Historiography_by_Exploring_Womanist_Leadership_in_the_AME_Church 

Kent, Blake Victor. “Religion/Spirituality and Gender-Differentiated Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms Age 13 to 34.” Journal of Religion and Health 59(4):2064-2081. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31811549/  

Kent, Blake Victor, Samuel Stroope, Alka M Kanaya, Ying Zhang, Namratha Kandula, and Alexandra E. Shields. “Private Religion/Spirituality, Self-rated Health, and Mental Health among U.S. South Asians.” Quality of Life Research 29(2):495-504. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31650305/ (Sam Stroope also SSSR)

Krull, Laura, Lisa D. Pearce, and Elyse Jennings. 2020. “How Religion, Social Class, and Race Intersect in the Shaping of Young Women’s Understandings of Sex, Reproduction, and Contraception,” Religions 12(5):1-26. 

Lee, Wondong and Joseph Yi. 2020 (Online Feb 3). “South Korean Evangelical Narratives on North Koreans and Homosexuals.” Journal of Homosexuality. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2020.1715140   

Mirjam Künkler, “Revising Shari‘a in the Light of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” in Mohsen Kadivar: Human Rights and Reformist Islam, Edinburgh University Press, 2021. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-human-rights-and-reformist-islam.html 

Mirjam Künkler, David Martin in Memoriam (1929–2019), Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vol. 58 (4), pp. 905-912. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12636

Prema Kurien “Indian Religions in the United States” pp. 399-412 in Knut Jacobsen (ed.), Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions. Routledge, Milton Park, Oxfordshire. 

Luft, Aliza (2020). “Theorizing Moral Cognition: Culture in Action, Situations, and Relationships.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. 6:1-15. https://7f873a67-0415-4931-9739-e5bd0a512170.filesusr.com/ugd/cf0c11_e36062fbf42e4d7fa3f67a24cf4a0c5b.pdf 

Luft, Aliza (2020). “How Do You Repair A Broken World? Conflict(ing) Archives after the Holocaust.” Qualitative Sociology. 43:317-343. https://7f873a67-0415-4931-9739-e5bd0a512170.filesusr.com/ugd/cf0c11_5f8c2872924049d0ae99830abb78c7fe.pdf

2020 Marti, Gerardo and Mark T. Mulder. “Capital and the Cathedral: Robert H. Schuller’s Continual Fundraising for Church Growth.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation. 30:1 (Winter). 63-107. https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2020.3 2020 

Ramos, Aida I., Gerardo Marti, and Mark T. Mulder. “The Strategic Practice of ‘Fiesta’ in a Latino Protestant Church: Religious Racialization and the Performance of Ethnic Identity.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 59:1 161-179. https://doi.org/10.1

Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin, “The Attitudes of Evangelicals towards the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” Journal of State and Church 62 (4) (2020): 603–629. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/csz063

Mackey, C. D., Silver, C. F., Rios, K., Cowgill, C. M., & Hood Jr., R. W. (2020). Concealment of nonreligious identity: Exploring social identity threat among atheists and other nonreligious individuals. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220905661  Kimberly Rios, Christopher Silver, and Ralph W. Hood Jr. (SSSR members) were all involved in the publication of this article

Gustavo Morello SJ, ‘Santas Pandemias, Batman!’ in Nelson Specchia and José Emilio Ortega (ed) El crepúsculo de las simples cosas. Lecturas esperanzadas y perspectivas críticas para un Sur en pandemia. Córdoba (Argentina), Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. p.269-274.

Nishiwaki, R. (2020). Finding Religion in Nature: An Alternative Index of Religiosity. In M. Takahashi (Ed.), The empirical study of the psychology of religion and spirituality in japan (pp. 102-117). San Antonio, TX : Elm Grove Publishing.

Jerry Pankhurst, "History, eccesiology, cannonicity, and power: Ukrainian and Russian Orthodoxy after the Euromaidan." Pp. 159-179 in Religion During the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict, edited by Elizabeth A. Clark and Dmitro Vovk (London/New York: Routledge, 2020). 

Jerry Pankhurst, "Hospitality for strangers? Policies and practices of Orthodox Christian churches and charities in support of new migrants to the United States and refugees abroad." Pp. 290-306 in Forced MIgration and Human Security in the Eastern Orthodox World, edited by Lucian N. Leustean (London/New York: Routledge, copyright 2020 [ebook avail. 2019]).

Schwadel, Philip. 2020. “The Politics of Religious Nones.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59(1):180-189.

Schiffbeck, A. (2020). "The spiritual «freelancers»: Young people, religiosity and community problem solving", Scientia Moralitas. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 5:1, 131-152 (http://www.scientiamoralitas.com/index.php/sm/article/view/61) - (Study supported by a Student Research Award from SSSR)

Stolz, Jörg. 2020a. "Secularization Theories in the 21st Century: Ideas, Evidence, Problems. Presidential Address." Social Compass 67(2):282-308. 

Stolz, Jörg, Detlef Pollack and Nan Dirk De Graaf 2020. "Can the State Accelerate the Secular Transitition? Secularization in East- and West Germany as a Natural Experiment." European Sociological Review 36(4). doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaa014.

Paul-André TURCOTTE «Christianity», in POSSAMAI, Adam and Anthony BLASI (eds)The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion, London, Sage Reference, 2020, p.131-133.

Peter J. Verhagen, “Believing in Psychiatry”. Journal of Religion and Health (2020) 59:1782-1793. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00879-7

Vaidyanathan, Brandon. “How minority religion can shape corporate capitalism: An emergentist account and empirical illustration.” Business and Society 59 (5), 881-913 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0007650318775104 

Woodell, Brandi and Philip Schwadel. 2020. “Changes in Religiosity among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Emerging Adults.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 59(2):379-396.

Ariel Zellman & Jonathan Fox “Defending the Faith? Assessing the Impact of State Religious Exclusivity on Territorial MID Initiation” Politics & Religion,, 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048319000488.

Member Announcements

The Amish & Plain Anabaptist Studies Association is holding its annual conference in Millersburg, OH, July 16-17. The event will be in-person. For details, see http://amishstudies.org/MiniConference.html APASA has also started a monthly APASA Cafe speaker/discussion series, highlighting recent research about Amish and plain Anabaptist groups, both from our Journal of Amish & Plain Anabaptist Studies and from other publication outlets. To be notified about upcoming talks, subscribe to our announcement list here: https://lists.uakron.edu/sympa/subscribe/apasa-list

The Mormon Social Science Association is starting an online, open access journal for articles in any social science discipline related to the various Latter-day Saint churches. The inaugural issue is in development, and is now accepting papers for the second issue. More information can be found here: https://www.mormonsocialscience.org/2020/06/16/inaugural-issue-2021-journal-of-the-mormon-social-science-association-jmssa/  

SSSR Communications Committee Members 

Brie Loskota, Executive Director, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California, Chair

Rebecca Sager, Professor, Department of sociology at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles 

Paola Pascual-Ferra, Associate Professor, Department of Communication, Loyola University, Maryland

Luther Young, Graduate Student, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University