Moral Religiosities: How Morality Structures Religious Understandings during the Transition to Adulthood
Religiosity remains an important sociological concept, from assessing religion’s effects on various outcomes to describing large-scale religious change. And yet conceptualizing religiosity—as a measure of intensity of religious practice—requires accounting for how respondents understand religious pr...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2021]
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| In: |
Sociology of religion
Year: 2021, Volume: 82, Issue: 1, Pages: 63-84 |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Religiosity remains an important sociological concept, from assessing religion’s effects on various outcomes to describing large-scale religious change. And yet conceptualizing religiosity—as a measure of intensity of religious practice—requires accounting for how respondents understand religious practice. Drawing on four waves of longitudinal interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), this paper examines the religious understandings of young Americans as they develop over 10 years. I find that respondents’ religious understandings are shaped by deeper moral orientations that broadly structure their lives. From these moral orientations, I theorize four ideal types of religious practitioners that help explain complex patterns of religiosity in America—the Congregant, the Believer, the Spiritualist, and the Metaphysician. Recognizing the moral orders that structure young Americans’ religious understandings opens new pathways for theorizing religion’s influence and change over time. |
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| ISSN: | 1759-8818 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Sociology of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/socrel/sraa025 |