Penny Edgell, PhD

Well, sir, here's to plain speaking and clear understanding.
                                               - Gutman, The Maltese Falcon

We live in the description of a Place, and not in the Place Itself. - Wallace Stevens

Communities of Value Among the Nonreligious

Sociologists have long known that in the American context, participation in local religious communities is associated with individual well-being, in part because of the networks of friendship and social support that congregations provide. Due in part to these same relationships, local religious communities also foster volunteering and community involvement. Religious identification also provides many people with a sense of meaning and purpose, anchoring their identity in a late-modern context that can foster anxiety and uncertainty.

The rapid decline of organized religion in the United States has reconfigured the social landscape. Almost a quarter of Americans overall — and about 35% of those under age 30 — now claim no religious identity, and each new cohort is less religious than were their parents’ generation. And among the non-religious there is a great variety, with some claiming very strong identities defined as not religious (e.g. atheists), while others claim a “spiritual” identity and hold on to some religiously-inspired ritual practices while distancing themselves from organized religion (the spiritual-but-not-religious) and others are “believers” who do not “belong” to any religious group. Others, including some of the agnostic, do not seek the certainty of a fixed religious or non-religious identity, while others (the “nothing in particulars”) seem genuinely indifferent to both religion and non-religion. At the same time, there is a growth in organizations mobilizing the non-religious for political action (e.g. the Secular Coalition of America) or inviting people to “come out as atheist” (e.g. the Richard Dawkins Foundation). Some non-religious leaders want to draw the non-religious into church-like fellowship, founding new organizations like the Sunday Assembly, while older groups like the Unitarian Universalist church create new promotional materials advertising that they are a welcoming community for atheists.

Right now I’m working with Jacqui Frost to understand the civic engagement, community involvement, spiritual expression, and well-being of the non-religious. This is part of an ongoing research effort to examine Americans’ participation in what I call communities of value — local, face-to-face groups that people join to express a valued identity, religious commitment, or philosophical commitment. The research will focus on understanding how participation in local communities of value shapes civic engagement, volunteering behavior, and well-being among both the religious and the non-religious.

Understanding Public religious Repertoires

How do people imagine the appropriate place of religion in our public life? Do people seek to infuse public discourse and institutions with religious values, or do they understand the public as a thoroughly secular arena? How do social movements draw on religious and non-religious frames and narratives to mobilize people around particular policy preferences or political outcomes? The social changes of the last 50 years have led to several big changes in how religion shapes politics in the American context. One change is the emergence of an organized secular arena that, while much smaller than the religious voluntary sector, is active, media-savvy, coalition-minded, and vocal. Another change is a generational divide on the religious right in terms of attitudes, issue-preferences, and coalition formation; a younger generation of evangelicals are more tolerant and accepting of same-sex unions and a variety of sexual expression, passionate about the environment and addressing climate change, and pro-human-rights. A third is the reinvigoration of activism on the religious left, often in partnership with secular groups and movements that focus on a range of issues that span political reform, prison and policing reform, racial justice, economic justice, immigration reform, and social welfare. All of this means an increasing pluralism in the religious and non-religious frames that shape understandings of the good society, American identity, views of minority groups, economics, politics, and social policy. It also means that people’s attitudes about religion’s influence in public life are linked in various - and not always obvious - ways to their own private religious beliefs and commitments. I’m working on a project with Jack Delehanty, at Clark University, and Evan Stewart, at University of Massachusetts at Boston, to understand how people’s private religious commitments inspire different visions of religion’s appropriate place in our public life, and the consequences for the formation of political and economic preferences.

BOUNDARIES IN THE AMERICAN MOSAIC PROJECT

In 2003 I worked with colleagues Doug Hartmann and Joe Gerteis here at the University of Minnesota and fielded a national survey for the American Mosaic Project, a study that examined how racial and religious identities shape conceptions of citizenship, national identity, and views of minority groups. This research led to a series of publications that explored Americans' attitudes toward racial and religious minorities, including one of the first studies of anti-atheist sentiment to be conducted since the 1970s.  The project web page contains links to publications using the 2003 survey data along with a link to the data file and codebook.  In 2014, working with some of our former graduate students, we fielded a followup survey that explores some of the same topics as the original research but also expands our inquiry, with more questions about attitudes toward religious outsider groups and public religious expression, as well as asking questions about a broader range of ethnic minority groups.  Findings from the 2014 survey, funded by the National Science Foundation and the Edelstein Family Foundation, can be found here.  And a preliminary report on a short 2019 follow-up survey can be found here.

TALKING ABOUTSOCIAL CONTROVERSIES

When presented with the opportunity to discuss contemporary social controversies, do individuals engage in a "culture war," driven by a sharp left-right political divide? Or is there common ground?  How do religious discourses and cultural frames shape the capacity of individuals to have civil and constructive conversations about social controversies?  My colleague Kathleen Hull and I have received a National Science Foundation grant to answer these questions.  We fielded 36 focus groups in three metropolitan areas (Boston, Houston, the Twin Cities) and are in the process of analyzing the data in 2012; a followup project in 2017 fielded 12 focus groups in and around the Twin Cities.  One of our first papers coming out of the data examines the cultural schemas of law, science, and religion and questions whether the dominant sociological framework of modernization theory helps us to understand when and how religion comes into conflict with legal or scientific claims.  Another paper examines how the use of storytelling in group settings helps to avoid conflict rooted in a left/right ideological divide and focus discussion on practical and moral consequences of specific policy options.