Silent Disagreement: Microinteractional Solutions to Moral Dissent Among Catholic Converts
How do converts manage their disagreements with religious teachings? Previous literature on religious dissent has largely focused on church members advocating change or apostatizing, solutions largely unavailable to initiates. Based on six months of ethnographic observations in a Catholic conversion...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2017]
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| In: |
Journal for the scientific study of religion
Year: 2017, Volume: 56, Issue: 2, Pages: 383-397 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
USA
/ Conversion (Religion)
/ Catholicism
/ Difference of opinion
/ Coping
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| RelBib Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality KBQ North America KDB Roman Catholic Church |
| Further subjects: | B
Homosexuality
B Catholicism B Contraception B Culture Wars B Conversion |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | How do converts manage their disagreements with religious teachings? Previous literature on religious dissent has largely focused on church members advocating change or apostatizing, solutions largely unavailable to initiates. Based on six months of ethnographic observations in a Catholic conversion class and 21 in-depth interviews with converts, sponsors, and teachers, I demonstrate how microinteractional norms encourage an atmosphere of silence around disagreement. I then show how initiates explain this conflict avoidant response by justifying their doubt, engaging in a process of hierarchical deference, in which initiates call upon the top-down structure of the Catholic Church to defer control upward, and faulting human imperfection rather than the institution itself. While culture wars debates of the past two decades have investigated a purported moral polarization of the American public, this study contributes to a growing literature on how the moderate majority negotiates disagreements between their beliefs and religious teachings. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-5906 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/jssr.12332 |