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Despite a number of contemporary theoretical works in sociology and moral philosophy arguing that the project of modern selfhood is necessarily a deeply moral endeavor, there are few empirical studies examining the specific ways in which social actors construct moral selves and lives. Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, this article examines how a group of adult Muslim converts in Missouri produced new moral selves in and through the use of embodied religious practices. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Bourdieu, I demonstrate how the embodied religious practices of ritual prayer, fasting and covering formed within converts the moral dispositions, or habitus, associated with becoming a \"good Muslim.\"

The sociology of religion focuses on an individual’s social and married life. This research performed the first focalized examination of the influence of spirituality and religiosity on the marital satisfaction of Pakistani Muslim couples and how religious commitment and religious practice strengthens the relationship of married couples. This study incorporates the Kansas Marital Satisfaction scale (KMSS), the Religious Commitment Inventory (RCI-10) and the Religious Practice scale to measure marital satisfaction. Survey questionnaires, including a survey invitation letter and an informed consent form, were sent to married couples residing in five urban areas of Pakistan. The sample consisted of 508 valid responses, 254 males and 254 females, exploring the respondent’s perception of their marital satisfaction. The data received were screened and tested through SPSS version 25. The first step of the data analysis was to examine the impact of religiosity variables (religious commitment, religious practice) on marital satisfaction. Findings indicated that religious commitment and religious practice are vital for a happy married life. The findings help explain the social dynamics of marital satisfaction in Pakistani culture. The results also indicated that religious commitment and religious practice strengthened and promoted marital satisfaction. This study is novel in the context of Pakistani culture and conclusions cannot be generalized to the whole population. Other religious factors may provide further research directions. The results of this study may help practitioners and decision-makers focusing on marital satisfaction issues.

Most studies into the role of religiousness in relation to depression severity have mainly found an inverse relationship between greater religiousness and lower levels of depressive symptoms. There is reason to assume that religiousness has a buffering effect on the relationship between stressful life events and depressive symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of religiousness in moderating the impact of stressors on depressive symptoms. n = 348 patients with either a depressive episode or adjustment disorder were assessed at referral to the liaison psychiatry services in three Dublin hospitals and n = 132 patients were followed up six months later. We assessed depressive symptoms, life events, social support, and religiosity, and used hierarchical and multiple linear regression for data analysis. The interaction of organised religious activity and the amount of life events was significant (β = −0.19, p = 0.001) in the cross-sectional prediction of depressive symptoms while non-organised religious activity (β = −0.23, p = 0.001) and intrinsic religiousness (β = −0.15, p = 0.033) interacted significantly with life events in the longitudinal analysis. This study demonstrated that various dimensions of religiousness buffered the impact of life events on outcome.

Scholars have long observed that religion and forgiveness are generally positively linked, but it is unclear why this is the case. This article proposes and tests potential mechanisms by which religion promotes forgiveness. Using data from the 1998 General Social Survey, I find that holding a collaborative orientation toward God, subscribing to a pervasive role of religion, and believing God forgives are primary factors promoting one's propensity to forgive both oneself and others. These factors have varying influence on interpersonal forgiveness compared to self-forgiveness and further illuminate the differences between the two processes. My findings demonstrate the importance of analyzing a person's religious beliefs and orientations directly, in addition to examining other dimensions of religion, such as affiliation, frequency of religious activity, and official religious teachings.

No detailed description available for \"The Light of the Eyes\".

Survey findings suggest that predominantly Muslim countries are among the most religious in the world and validate commonly held, but overly simplistic, perceptions of Muslims as extremely and uniformly religious. Existing research has demonstrated that survey estimates can give a distorted view of the reality of levels of religious practice; however, it has thus far focused exclusively on traditionally Christian, advanced Western democracies. To address this oversight, the veracity of self-reported religious practice in the Muslim world is tested using Pakistan, the Palestinian territories, and Turkey as cases for study. Comparing estimates of prayer from conventional surveys with those from time diaries, marginal rates of overreporting are estimated for each country by sex. The time-use measure of prayer is then imputed for the conventional survey data setto estimate overreporting at the respondent level and to predict overreporting using a measure of religious identity importance. Findings suggest that overreporting of prayer occurs in each country considered, although more consistently for women than for men. Moreover, religious identity importance is strongly correlated with overreporting of prayer, suggesting that a similar mechanism may promote the measurement error for overreported prayer in the Muslim world and overreported church attendance in the West.

This research note focuses on Muslim minorities living in a secular context, the Netherlands. The question is whether mosque attendance among Turkish-and Moroccan-Dutch changed between 1998 and 2006, testing mechanisms of religious decline and religious vitality. Elaborating on previous research of the same Muslim groups, this study examines a longer time span and adds contextual-level explanations. Whereas previous research reported a linear trend towards secularization over time and over generations, in recent years the trend has become more complex. The revival of religious attendance among the second generation is most striking. Forces of secularization such as educational attainment and generational replacement gradually lose their predictive power. Over time, processes of secularization are therefore not inevitable.

Orsi cites the relevance of radical empirical studies of religion in understanding and responding to urgent global and important political situations. One reason is that it is chastening and liberating to stand in an attitude of disciplined openness and attentiveness before a religious practice or idea of another era or culture on which one do not impose their wishes, dreams, desires, or fears.

In this paper, we examine whether and what extent public and private forms of religiosity act as moderators of the volunteering and well-being relationship in mid- to later-life. We use data from the second wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (n = 1,805). We analyzed the relationships between volunteering and indicators of well-being (self-rated physical and mental health), and tested the moderating effects of public and private religiosity on the volunteering and well-being relationship. Our findings suggest that salubrious effects of volunteering on the self-perceived physical and mental health of middle- aged and older-aged adults varied by their participation in different forms of religiosity. In particular, volunteers who engaged in more public forms of religiosity reported significantly better physical and mental health than non-volunteers who engaged in these forms of religiosity. In other words, individuals who were actively engaged public forms of religious practices and who volunteered, maximized the associated health benefits.

In a time of increasing religious diversity, interfaith political coalitions have become important settings for interreligious interaction, but little research has explored the types of religious expression that are generated therein. Prevailing theories in the sociology of religion indicate that interaction with religious others results in dilution of traditional religious commitments or production of stronger boundaries. But emerging perspectives in cultural sociology shift attention from individual religious commitments to the ways in which settings shape different styles of religious expression. Insights about edge spaces drawn from urban theory suggest that religiously diverse settings can be generative of new types of religious practices. We apply these insights to the study of interfaith activism by drawing on interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with religious advocacy professionals and activists working in interfaith coalitions. Conceptualizing the sites of these interfaith encounters as edge spaces, we analyze variation in the types of religious expression that occur in interfaith settings. We find that both aggregative and integrative practices are produced, but these vary depending on the goals and structure of the setting, as well as participants' accountability to outside religious gatekeepers.