Intersections in Focus
Religion in the Wake of Crisis: A Longitudinal Study in Puerto Rico View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Julianne Bryant
Religion has been shown to provide a forward focus, beyond one’s current circumstances and, thus, create an empowering and unifying function. Various studies demonstrate a correlation between religion and positive coping and resiliency following stressful or traumatic events, some even measuring post-traumatic growth. This understanding has informed the scientific study of religion in dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster, an emerging and growing field of inquiry. Many resources have been developed to encourage the integration of religious and spiritual elements in disaster relief efforts. And current research has supported the benefits of positive religious and spiritual care in disaster survivors. However, studies examining spiritual and emotional care in practice are very limited. Even fewer are investigations within actual church communities. This paper presents the findings of a mixed methods research study that investigated how religion influenced the spiritual and emotional care of the people of Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria, the political strife of summer 2019, the earthquakes and the pandemic. With this new knowledge and understanding we hope to isolate variables and develop models for practitioners that may contribute to a more culturally sensitive practice.
Featured Exploring the Cultural Evolution of Religion through Contemporary Practice: A Large-scale Study of New Religions
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stephen Christopher
Why do some religious groups achieve global popularity while others fail to spread or simply die out? How can we track changing religious expressions in contemporary contexts and compare these dynamics to historical data? This paper analyzes the potential of the mixed-methods Database of Religious History (DRH) to address these questions. While the DRH has pioneered a digital interface to analyze cultural evolution through the long durée, it currently lacks data on a specific set of variables that would be required to test hypotheses relating to the cultural morphologies, which can be tested through a New Religions dataset. This study describes the methodological process of creating a poll on New Religions and recruiting 100s of expert participants. I focus on how the tech interface can expands academic engagement with Digital Humanities and facilitates new forms of computationally-engaged interdisciplinarity testing about the dynamics of religious change.
Dissecting Online Patriarchal Masculinity: How Christian Fundamentalism Bleeds into the Manosphere View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ty Anderson
In recent years there has been increasing dialogue online that has projected patriarchal masculinity, in particular, the Manosphere. Such rhetoric has worked in opposition to the feminist movement and has been wildly accepted by youth in America. Using the works of feminist scholar bell hooks, this study examines the relationship between the Manosphere, patriarchal masculinity, and fundamentalist White Christianity, mainly how the manosphere develops the same arguments and perspectives as those presented in Christian fundamentalism. Specifically, we explore how these concepts work to hinder intimate relationships and perpetuate sexist notions while also examining capitalist exploitation and racism.
