40868 - Social and Organizational Forces Influencing Religious Actors

Description

This session investigates how religious actors and institutions are shaped by broader social, legal, and organizational forces. Papers explore the impact of legal and cultural shifts on religious behavior, examining how changes in state policies influence patterns of worship and moral attitudes. Other contributions delve into internal dynamics within religious organizations, including how authority can become centralized even without a deliberate centralizing figure, and how transnational religious networks navigate identity formation and internal conflict. The session also addresses how religious norms and structures can create environments that facilitate harm. These papers illuminate the many ways religion interacts with law, culture, institutional design, and power, offering new insights into religious life in changing social contexts.

Sub Unit

• Section on Sociology of Religion / Section on Sociology of Religion Open Paper Sessions

Presider

• Ruiqian Li, American University

Individual Presentations

• Unite without Uniform: Networked Growth via Group Tensions - En-Ya Tsai, University of Notre Dame

• Centralization without a Centralizer: The Unintended Consolidation of Authority at the International Mission Board (1979-2002) - Andrew Chalfoun, University of California-Los Angeles

• Sundays Unbound: Blue Laws, Church Attendance, and Shifting Moral Attitudes in the U.S. - Chaeyoon Lim, Washington University in St. Louis; Dingeman Wiertz, University College London; Ozan Aksoy, University of Oxford

• Sexual coercion in ultra-Orthodox Jewish marriages: Conceptualizing community level sexual violence - Jessie Ford, Columbia University; Alicia Jen, Columbia University; Gloria Fortuna, Columbia University; Jennifer S. Hirsch, Columbia University

Session Organizer

• David E. Eagle, Duke University