The Russia-Ukraine War and Religion

Religion remains a significant part of national identity in many European countries, and this is true for both Russia and Ukraine.  Both have historical ties to the Eastern Orthodox Church, yet there have also been divisions.  Since the end of Soviet rule in 1991, religion and the official status of religious groups in both Russia and Ukraine have undergone significant changes and not without disagreement.

Three Orthodox churches have played the most significant roles in Ukraine, one of which has strong ties to Moscow.  As recently as 2018, there was a unification of the three into a single Orthodox Church of Ukraine -- although some of those with ties to Moscow did not join the unification.  This development was supported by many Orthodox leaders worldwide and gained official support by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in 2019.  However, it was criticized by Russian political leaders and leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church who want Ukrainian Orthodox Christians to exist under the direction of Orthodox religious leaders in Moscow.

Read this article about religion in Russia-Ukraine war from the Religion News Service, and think about the following questions.  What key religious developments have occurred in Ukraine?  What is the significance of religious developments in Ukraine?  What role has religion played in the war?

Students' Beliefs and Academic Success

This article by Ilana Horowitz at Religion News Service reports on interesting findings on the relationship between religiosity and academic success.  Religiously devout American students get higher grades and are more likely to graduate from college, on average, than students who are much less religious, but they also attend less selective colleges.  Read the article to see the explanation, and to see what the research reveals about atheist students.

The Nuns of TikTok

The Daughters of St. Paul have created a splash on TikTok, getting millions of views for their videos.  They also got some attention in the latest issue of the Economist Magazine (gated).

Their videos reveal the creative and humorous sides to these nuns from outside of Boston -- especially Sister Orianne Pietra Rene and Sister Danielle Lussier.  As explained in that Economist article, the videos have also created opportunities for them to share their beliefs and develop new friendships.  Even if these videos were not intended to serve a missionary purpose, they still do, which goes to show you that publicity can take many forms.  And different forms allow the nuns to reach different people.

The Benefits and Costs of Streaming Church Services

The COVID pandemic has affected social interactions in many ways, and this is also true for religious interactions.  One of the biggest changes for churches is is that many congregations began live streaming their church services online.  Some did this because large worship services were temporarily prohibited by law, while others did it to enable members with health concerns who would not attend in person to watch remotely, or both.

As COVID infection rates have continued to fluctuate, congregations that started live streaming during the pandemic must decide whether or not to continue streaming their services.  But as with any type of activity, the streaming of church services has benefits and costs.  Let us consider some of these here.

Benefits:

1. Streaming allows people who would not participate in person to participate remotely.  Streaming thus allows those people to maintain their religious capital -- or to prevent it from depreciating as rapidly as it would if they did not participate at all.  This is the most important reason to stream and is the main motivation for beginning to stream during the pandemic.  Some members might be especially served by streaming services, including those who are out of town and those whose health prevents them from attending in person.
2. Streaming allows the congregation to more easily reach and recruit new members.  Attending a congregation for the first time can be a scary experience.  When a person is invites you to attend church you have not previously attended, you might hesitate to go because you are unsure of what the experience will be like.  Watching a service remotely entails a much lower cost and risk because you can easily stop the stream or watch anonymously.  Streaming the service thus allows potential recruits an easier entry into the congregation.  Some people might be too afraid to go in person but be willing to watch remotely, and maybe they will come in person once they determine that they like the congregation. 
3. Streamed services can be recorded, thereby allowing some people to have a form of engagement with a church service that they missed synchronously.  As with 1 and 2 above, the ability to watch a recorded services enable people to reinforce their religious capital when they might not have been able to do so otherwise.

Costs:

1. Some people who would attend in person if there was no remote option might switch to remote attendance rather than attend in person.  If this happens, then the lower in-person attendance can reduce the vitality of the in-person meetings.  It also means that those who switch to remote viewing will have fewer chances to develop friendship and other ties at church services, thereby causing their religious capital to be lower than it would be without the remote option.  Worshipping together and fellowshipping each other are two of the main benefits of in-person church attendance, and these are missed when people switch from in-person participation to remote viewing.  Lower in-person participation can thus bring a lower quality of collective religious production.
2. Some equipment and software may need to be purchased, and a volunteer will need to run the live stream.  The technical requirements for streaming a church service are not that large.  A smart phone and a Zoom account can be enough to do a simple live stream, and a tripod and good microphone can improve the quality. More sophisticated set-ups with multiple audio feeds and viewer participation are also possible, and a volunteer will be needed to run the live stream.  Note that many of these technical costs are set-up costs that are paid when first beginning the live streams and not thereafter.  The ongoing costs of continuing to live stream are fairly low.

The size of these benefits and costs will differ across congregations.  A congregation that places a high value on in-person participation will be less comfortable with an easy remote option that creates an added incentive for members to skip church because of the convenience of remote viewing.  Another congregation that values a low cost of initial participation for potential new members will like having the remote option for new recruits.  There might also be innovations in how to grant access to the live stream or the recordings that try to balance different desires.  For example, a congregation can limit access to its live stream, e.g., limit to only those who are unable to attend in person due to health.  By limiting the remote access, the in-person participation is promoted while still making a remote option available for some of the members.

A key point to take away from this discussion is that we should expect to see wide variation across congregations in how streaming is used going forward.  Some will continue their live streams while others will stop them, and among those that continue there will be variation in how open or restricted the access is to those live streams.

Roller Derby and Religious Competition

One of the important premises that follows from using an economic approach to religion is that competition exists and many different margins, and religious groups are not immune to this competition.  Religious groups must compete with other religious groups, but they must also compete with secular alternatives to religion.  An academic article just published in the journal Sociological Inquiry argues that roller derby can be understood as one of these secular alternatives.

The reference is:  Jason Wollschleger, 2022, "Roller Derby as a Secular Alternative to Religion" , Sociological Inquiry (it is currently in early view and so does not have an assigned issue yet). The author is a sociologist, not an economist, and he draws from ideas that have been developed outside of economics.  Some ideas that are important in the economic approach have corresponding ideas from other other approaches, and this should not be surprising because good ideas are found in many places.

From the abstract:

[R]oller Derby functions as a secular competitor to religion in the lives of these skaters in three key ways: (1) roller Derby participants make a significant investment of time, energy, money, and physical well-being into their sport; (2) roller Derby does, in fact, satisfy most if not all of the individual needs traditionally satisfied by religion as identified by Stolz et al (2016)...; and, (3) participation in roller Derby does conflict with individuals’ formal religious involvement.

Skim the article to find its main points and the types of evidence used by the author.

Note:  You will probably need to use UCI VPN to access this article from your home.

A Trade-off Between Friendliness and Security

A recent RNS article discusses a trade-off that several synagogues find themselves facing, i.e., that between offering synagogue services that are open to strangers and services that ensure the safety for congregants.  This comes after a newcomer was welcomed into a synagogue in Texas and took several hostages at gunpoint.  The hostages eventually escaped, and the newcomer was killed.

Leaders of other synagogues who are fearing similar attacks have stepped up security at their services, but this has come at a cost of reducing friendliness.  It is a trade-off that many synagogues are willingly taking.  Doors are locked during services, guards are hired, cameras installed, and more, including turning away newcomers if the clergy do not know they were coming.

Religious groups must always make trade-offs in carrying out their religious mission, but this is not one that we normally think of.  It is a trade-off that a religious group -- usually a new religious movement or a religious minority -- must consider when it finds itself faced with threats of violence.

A New Reformed Church Denomination

Many American religious groups -- especially mainline Protestant denominations -- have experienced schism as a result of internal disagreement about what should be their official stance on LGBTQ issues.  In the last 15 years, the Anglican Church in North America split from the Episcopal Church in 2008, the North American Lutheran Church split from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2010, and ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians split from the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 2012.  In each case, conservative members organized a new denomination so that they would not have to accept policy changes on LGTBQ matters in the parent denomination.

We can now add another denomination to this list:  the Alliance of Reformed Churches split from the Reformed Church in America in 2021.  This split now involves 125 congregations leaving the parent church and trying to join the new group.

Read this article from the Religion News Service for a summary of the situation.  LGTBQ policies take central stage, but there are other factors that are also part of the conversation, including church finances, organizational structure, and growth strategies.

Additional changes are also in the works for the United Methodist Church, though these have been put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  You can see previous blog posts on this topic here and here.

Schism is one type of dynamism in the American religious marketplace.  Members of religious groups must continually negotiate a myriad of contentious issues, and when a satisfying compromise cannot be reached then schism is one possible outcome.

Rain, Church Attendance, and Crime

Yesterday, the University of Texas at San Antonio web site published an article about one of their economics professor's research on the relationship between rain, church attendance, and crime.  See the article here.  This is the economic approach to religion in action!

The research question asks what is the effect of church attendance in a community on crime in that community.  To answer this question, you cannot just merely look at the correlation between church attendance and crime across communities because there are many other factors that may muddy those correlations.  Ideally, we would run an experiment in which we (the experimenters) randomly assigned some community members to attend church and others to not attend church, but this experiment is not really possible (or ethical) to run.

When social scientists are unable to run the ideal experiment, they often look for situations in which there is something in the real world that has some features of an experiment.  In this case, Professor Moreno-Medina uses rainfall as a type of experimental treatment because rainfall during the times of a church service causes a decrease in church attendance.  The rainfall provides a kind of exogenous, random experimental treatment -- what economists call a natural experiment.

Read the article to see what he finds.  It is a short article, so read it entirely.  Pay attention to how the article describes the potentially complex relationship between church attendance and crime.