Sublime

I am proposing that we should watch what happens in and to religion the way ecologists worry about the fate of frogs whose dwindling numbers tip us off to some wider phenomenon occurring throughout the ecosystem.

Pew researchers noted that the “nones” are this country’s fastest-growing religious category. These same scholars found that two-thirds of Americans — affiliated or unaffiliated — say religion is losing its influence in their lives. Further, another researcher, Mark Chaves, has noted that “beginning with those born in the 1960s, more people raised

Among them is the ongoing opportunity to observe people and the cultures they inhabit from their perspectives, and to try to answer questions like: How do groups of people form? What are their core beliefs? What do they aspire to, and why? How do they create social ties? How does one culture differ from another? Do any of these local beliefs,

University of Texas sociologist Bill Bishop, in his recent book The Big Sort: Why Clustering of Like-Minded Americans Is Tearing Us Apart, claims that Americans over the last three decades have “been reshaping the way they lived. . . . In every corner of society, people were creating new, more homgenous groups. . . . Churches filled with people who

life? Recent studies have found that meaning in life is associated with right-wing authoritarianism, a belief system defined as uncritical submission to authority, feelings of aggression toward those who violate social norms, and strict adherence to conventional values. That is, right-wing authoritarians reported higher levels of meaning in life

we only wish to ascertain whether and to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation and the quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world. Furthermore, what concrete aspects of our capitalistic culture can be traced to them.

we will likely see more consolidation of churches into medium and larger churches.

Schleiermacher,