Digital Commons Network^™

What Impact The Supreme Court’S Recent Hobby Lobby Decision Might Have For Lgbt Civil Rights?, Vincent Samar

Vincent Samar

Abstract

What Impact the Supreme Court’s Recent Hobby Lobby

Decision Might Have for LGBT Civil Rights?

Vincent J. Samar

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Hobby Lobby case has created shockwaves of concern among civil rights groups questioning whether for-profit corporations can assert a religious exemption from civil rights legislation under a 1993 federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The matter is of particular concern in the LGBT community given the possible impact it could have on services traditionally offered to those getting married as more and more states legalize same-sex marriage. Though the Court’s conservative majority …

Religious Faith And Depression Among Child Welfare Involved Mothers With Young Children, Elissa E. Madden, Donna M. Aguiniga, Karen T. Zellmann

Journal of Family Strengths

Using secondary data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Survey of New Parents, this study explores the association between religion and depression in a nationwide sample of mothers with young children who were referred to Child Protective Services (N=344). The findings suggest that, when controlling for other contextual factors, mothers who viewed their religious faith as a guide for their daily lives were more than three times as likely to have experienced depression within the last year. Additionally, mothers who attended religious services a few times a month were significantly less likely to experience depression than mothers who reported …

Situating Belonging Through Multi-Sited Identities: Community Building Among Middle Eastern Christians In Upstate South Carolina, Amelia Ayoob

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a Human Geography perspective on immigrant identity and integration. Using the case of a diverse, multigenerational Middle Eastern Christian population in the Upstate region of South Carolina, I explore how Middle Eastern immigrants and their descendants have negotiated belonging and identity in the United States by simultaneously building new social networks in the Upstate and maintaining ties to the Middle East. The focus on a single case allowed for an in-depth exploration of how geographic and historical contexts have shaped the present-day dynamics of the community (broadly defined) constructed around two Catholic churches, one Latin and one …

Interview With Stephen Lovegrove, Stephen Lovegrove

Winthrop University Oral History Program

In his December 2014 interview with Michelle Dubert-Bellrichard, Stephen Lovegrove shares his story coming to Winthrop as an “out” student recently kicked out of a religious college. Lovegrove details his perception of the attitude toward LGBTQ people and issues in Winthrop and Rock Hill. Lovegrove identifies resources in the community that are beneficial to LGBTQ people. He also comments on the LGBTQ social movement in terms of growing acceptance and the challenges it will face. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the Louise Pettus Archives and Special Collections Oral History Program.

What Influences Opposition To Gay Marriage?, Nick Fernandes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

There has been a lot of discussion in news media about religious opposition to gay rights. To test these claims, I set out to compare religiosity (as defined by how frequently a given respondent attends religious services) with support for gay rights (in this case, defined as support for gay marriage or civil unions). I also sought to compare the effects of religious denomination on support for gay marriage. In comparing all these variables, I found that religiosity does have a strong impact on support for gay marriage. However, I found that religious denomination (with the exception of moderate Protestants …

The Santa Clara Strength Of Religious Faith Questionnaire (Scsorf): A Validation Study On Iranian Muslim Patients Undergoing Dialysis, Amir H. Pakpour, Thomas G. Plante, Mohsen Saffari, Bengt Fridlund

Psychology

The Santa Clara Strength of Religious Faith Questionnaire (SCSORF) is an often used and validated scale that is uncommonly utilized in culturally diverse populations. The purpose of this research investigation was to adapt the SCSORF for use among Iranian Muslim patients undergoing dialysis and to examine the reliability and validity of the scale among this population. A total of 428 patients (228 females, 200 males, M age = 52.2 years, SD = 10) were selected from five dialysis center in Tehran and Qazvin, Iran. A comprehensive forward–backward translation system was used for cross-cultural translation. Patients completed a baseline questionnaire obtaining …

Learning How To Fly The Intersectionality Of Religion, Culture And Gender Of The Samoan Baha’I Community, Detmer Yens Kremer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The Samoan Baha’i community balances their multiple identities in a society where they are a minority. Their cultural, religious and gender identities are all essential to their expressions as human beings, and this research aims to explore how Samoan Baha’i reconcile their multiplicity of identities. Information was gathered through a wide range of primary and secondary resources consisting of interviews, other forms of personal communications and participatory observation. An expansion of the notion of intersectionality in a Pacific context contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of cultural change, globalization and social justice. As the Baha’i religion does not believe in …

Is Faith On The Campus Tour? Rural, Public College Students' Exploration Of Spiritual And Religious Identity, Tamara Durant

Dissertations - ALL

Abstract

This dissertation examined how students of diverse spiritual or religious beliefs or worldviews at a rural, public college interpreted, made meaning of, and drew upon their spirituality in relation to other aspects of their identity (e.g., race, gender, sexual identity), focusing particularly on the intersections of students' multiple marginalized identities. It was a single-site, qualitative study involving 20 participants attending a rural, mid-sized, predominantly-White northeastern public university. The researcher used semi-structured, in-person interviews, gathering and analyzing data using symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969) with the critical stance possible from applying the lens of the Reconceptualized Model of Multiple Dimensions of …

Religion As A Legal Proxy, Micah Schwartzman

San Diego Law Review

In what follows, after briefly summarizing Koppelman’s position, I argue that his view is vulnerable to the charge that using religion as a legal proxy is unfair to those with comparable, but otherwise secular, ethical and moral convictions. Koppelman has, of course, anticipated this objection, but his responses are either ambivalent or insufficient to overcome it. The case for adopting religion as a proxy turns partly on arguments against other potential candidates. In particular, Koppelman rejects the freedom of conscience as a possible substitute. But even if he is right that its coverage is not fully extensive with the category …

The Effects Of Religion On Organizational Citizenship Behavior, Joel S. Ivy

Honors Theses

Research shows that religion has numerous effects on how people behave and act, so the goal of this study is to expand the body of knowledge about religion and see if it affects workplace behavior, specifically organizational citizenship behavior. Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is discretionary individual behavior that is not directly or explicitly recognized by the formal reward system and promotes the effective functioning of the organization. This study seeks to understand if religion, broken down further into internal and external religiosity, has any effects on how people behave at work. Further, if religion does have an effect on workplace …

Ties That Bind? The Questionable Consent Justification For Hosanna-Tabor, Jessie Hill

NULR Online

No abstract provided.

African American Environmental Ethics: Black Intellectual Perspectives 1850-1965, Vanessa Fabien

Doctoral Dissertations

The historical scholarship in environmental history centers around the narratives of elite white men. Therefore, scholars such as William Cronon, Dorceta Taylor, Noël Sturgeon, and Carolyn Merchant are calling for research that uncovers the political and moral stances of people of color on nature, land ownership, and environmental pollution. This dissertation addresses this call by engaging William H. Sewell Jr.’s cross-disciplinary approach between history and the social sciences to introduce a nuanced historical analysis that interrogates the channels via which African Americans’ environmental ethic sculpted the development of North American environmental history and activism. This dissertation contends that African Americans …

Understanding Women's Health Promotion In Rural Canadian Churches, Robyn Plunkett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Many rural health resources are linked to community churches, which are often well attended, especially by rural women. Thus, the rural church may be an effective health resource for rural Canadian women who have compromised access to health resources. Despite the significant role that the rural church plays in the life of rural communities, there is very limited research that addresses how the church acts or could act as a health resource for rural women. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of how the church as a place may influence health promotion in rural communities. This dissertation explores the relevance of …

Sexuality, Religion And Nationalism: A Contrapuntal Reading Of The History Of Female Activism And Political Change In Egypt, Jihan Zakarriya

Journal of International Women's Studies

Focusing on the Thomson Reuters Foundation Women Survey in 2013 that found Egypt to be ‘the worst Arab state for women’ (Boros 1), this paper aims at tracing the interaction between sexuality, religion, and politics, in controlling and marginalizing the public roles of Egyptian women throughout the 20th Century, which has reached its climax in post-Mubarak Egypt. I argue that, despite sexual and social abuses, the first decade of the 21th Century has witnessed the emergence of a promising potential of political feminist activism and power in Egypt.

Using Latent Profile Regression To Explore The Relationship Between Religiosity And Work-Related Ethical Judgments, Alan G. Walker, L. Allison Jones-Farmer, Jason D. Debode, James W. Smither, Raymond D. Smith

Journal of Religion and Business Ethics

Utilizing social structural symbolic interactionist theorizing about self-identity as presented by Weaver and Agle (2002) we obtained data related to five key measures of religiosity believed to be critical for understanding religiosity’s influence on ethical judgments. Using our five key religiosity measures we then fit a latent profile regression model to explore whether and how these constructs related to one another and to work-related ethical judgments. Results revealed that both our analytic and theoretical frameworks (latent profile regression and symbolic interactionism) were helpful in identifying religious profiles which are helpful for understanding the relationship between religiosity and work-related ethical judgments. …

T&C Magazine Issue 05 - Fall 2014, T&C Media

T&C Magazine

Articles include: This is My Normal // Otterbein Preserves Artwork // Tragedy Strikes, but Passion Lives On // Feminism Evolves // Alumni with Cool Careers // Religious Diversity on Campus // Teamwork Transcends Gender // Where in the World Are You From? // Restoring Through Repurposing // Freshman Package // Once a Greek, Always a Greek

Colleen Carroll Campbell: Catholicism, Feminism, And Women Saints, Hannah Dulmaine

Fall 2014, Storytelling and the Life of Faith

Many views of modern day feminism appear to contradict the teachings of the Catholic Church. However, Colleen Carroll Campbell, an award-winning author and journalist, was determined from a young age to reconcile feminism with Catholicism. With the guidance and wisdom of female saints, Campbell conveys the importance and relevance of faith for modern day Catholic women, especially in regard to controversial issues such as contraception, abortion, fertility, and motherhood.

Religion Is Not The Answer: How To Turn Restlessness Into Meaningful Change - The Egyptian Conundrum, Alain C. Seckler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The situation in Egypt and elsewhere in parts of the Arab world is to some extent reminiscent of the situation that prevailed before 1914 in Europe, where a motley array of unharnessed popular micronationalisms (today, instrumentalized religious fervor) combined with big power politics and interests and led to the cataclysm of war. With regard to Egypt, there is also a huge generational gap, with 2/3 of Egypt's population below the age of 35 years. The so-called "solutions" of the past, whether religious or secular, will no longer work if the voice of the young people is not heard by their …

To Seek And Save The Lost: Human Trafficking And Salvation Schemas Among American Evangelicals, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick

School of Peace Studies: Faculty Scholarship

American evangelicals have a history of engagement in social issues in general and anti-slavery activism in particular. The last 10 years have seen an increase in both scholarly attention to evangelicalism and evangelical focus on contemporary forms of slavery. Extant literature on this engagement often lacks the voices of evangelicals themselves. This study begins to fill this gap through a qualitative exploration of how evangelical and mainline churchgoers conceptualize both the issue of human trafficking and possible solutions. I extend Michael Young's recent work on the confessional schema motivating evangelical abolitionists in the 1830s. Through analysis of open-ended responses to …

Do All Roads Lead To Islamic Radicalism? A Comparison Of Islamic Laws In India And Nigeria, Amitabha Bose

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Same-Sex Marriage And Religion: An Inappropriate Relationship, Brittney Baker

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

The debate over same-sex marriage has been a prominent issue in our society over many years now, appearing in several ballot initiatives such as California's Proposition 8. The idea of allowing two people of the same gender to enter into the institution of marriage has brought out drastic emotions and reactions from many different groups of people. Those who engage in the debate believe strongly in their convictions; the two loudest voices tend to come from the gay community and the religious community, the former arguing in favor of same-sex marriage and the latter against it. Religious groups, predominantly from …

Religious Views As A Predictor Of Vote Choice, Erienne Plotkin

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

This is a study of the relationship between the religious beliefs of people in the United States and their voting patterns. It is also a comparison between such results and that of more traditional voting predictors such as economic status or education level of voters. In general, there has been an apparent separation of church and state. More common predictors of voting behavior that have been used in the past are traditional demographics such as education levels and economic status. Although these traditional predictors are often accurate, religious belief and churches may play a greater, if insufficiently recognized role in …

Elite Leadership Of Opinion And The Public Polarization: The Same Sex Marriage Debate In The United States, Patricia Victorio

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

The California Supreme Court made a landmark decision with the court case In re Marriage Cases (2008), legalizing same sex marriage within the state, and overturning the California Defense of Marriage Act (Proposition 22). With a swift decision the supreme court put the controversial issue of same sex marriage back in the media spot light. Outside of California, states such as Arizona also reopened the debate of same sex marriage. The Arizona legislature put this issue up for a vote in the Fall 2008 election. The Arizona ballot measure, Proposition 102, wanted to define marriage between one man and one …

Seeing And Not Believing: Concern For Visual Culture In The Humanist, Rick Clifton Moore

Rick Clifton Moore

A recent study of a magazine distributed by a powerful conservative Christian group determined the organization showed strong concern for “visual culture.” The publication directed its readers on how to understand the seen world. The present study analyzes a periodical of an avowedly secular group to understand how they might manifest similar or different concerns. On the whole, the content of the magazine called The Humanist appears to indicate that visual culture is as important to agnostics as it is to theists.

Reexamination Of The Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale Structure: The Impact Of Additional Items, Ryan Michael Tuggle

Theses and Dissertations

Hood, Hill, and Williamson (2005) proposed a new way of defining religious fundamentalism - one based on the principle of intratextuality. The principle of intratextuality states that fundamentalists derive truth through interpreting their sacred text. The six attitudes proposed as extensions of the principle of intratextuality were divine, inerrant, self-interpretive, privileged, authoritative, and unchanging (Williamson, Hood, Ahmad, Sadiq, & Hill, 2010). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to develop the Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale (IFS). The authors sought a multidimensional model with the six attitudes as latent variables, using principal components extraction and a Varimax (orthogonal) rotation. The authors failed to …

Attitudes Toward Muslim Lebanese Women In Religious Resurgence: A Study Of 284 University Students, Bassima Schbley, Lori Maria Walton

Faculty Publications

The politicization of religion in the last few decades has created a climate ripe for religious resurgence in all areas of the world. The decreased role of religion among societies and effective secularization and modernization of the West have directly influence opposing factors of “religious resurgence”, “religious fundamentalism”, and “religious revivalism” as a sense of cultural preservation and balancing new social, economic, emotional and interllectural side effects of modernization growth (Sahliyeh, 1990). The effects of religious resurgence on Muslim Lebanese women’s efforts to enhance their freedom, equity, and civil rights need to be explored thoroughly to provide an adequate analysis …

Attitudes Toward Muslim Lebanese Women In Religious Resurgence: A Study Of 284 University Students, Lori Maria Walton

Lori Maria Walton

The politicization of religion in the last few decades has created a climate ripe for religious resurgence in all areas of the world. The decreased role of religion among societies and effective secularization and modernization of the West have directly influence opposing factors of “religious resurgence”, “religious fundamentalism”, and “religious revivalism” as a sense of cultural preservation and balancing new social, economic, emotional and interllectural side effects of modernization growth (Sahliyeh, 1990). The effects of religious resurgence on Muslim Lebanese women’s efforts to enhance their freedom, equity, and civil rights need to be explored thoroughly to provide an adequate analysis …

Religious Beliefs About Suffering: Measure Validation And Relationships With Well-Being, Amy Hale

Doctoral Dissertations

Beliefs are central to all world religions, but there is limited data on the relationships between specific religious beliefs and well-being. This dissertation presents findings from two studies of beliefs about suffering using the Views of Suffering Scale (VOSS; Hale-Smith, Park, & Edmondson, 2012).

Study 1 was a cross-sectional validation study using an online sample of 1000 participants self-identified as Catholic, Protestant, Atheist/Agnostic, Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish. Measures included information regarding demographics and measures of religious history and beliefs. Results of Study 1 indicated differences in beliefs based on age, geographic region, religious affiliation, and how religious or spiritual participants …

Power, Privilege, And Prayer: Christian Right Identity Politics And Mobilizing For School Prayer, Daniel Tagliarina

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is about how the political push for school prayer functions as an effort to retrench conservative social power and a conservative political worldview via identity-based politics. The New Christian Right (NCR) mobilizes secularized arguments of equality, victimhood and parental rights to advocate for school prayer. The NCR mobilizes to include religion in a unique cultural institution (public education) involved in the training of future generations of American citizens. The NCR’s mobilization aims at preserving Christian social power and privilege with little-to-no attention paid to protecting religion qua religion—not just Christian faith—in America.

The NCR, as a social movement, …

Behind The Doors Of White Supremacy, Catlyn Kenna Keenan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What is the relationship between religious belief and acts of violence and terrorism? The American white supremacy movements of the Ku Klux Klan and Christian Identity are deeply rooted in Protestant Christianity and are also responsible for some of the gravest acts of violence on American soil. The intersection between religious belief and terrorist action illuminates the interplay between religion and acts of violence.

This study firstly provides a history of the ideology of Christian Identity with specific attention to the ways in which committing violence is rationalized and understood as redemptive. Secondly, this study identifies six characteristics of a …