The SSSR Conference in Salt Lake City
Exploring interesting dynamics surrounding religion and its lack
About a decade ago, I wrote a piece on my now-defunct and deleted Wordpress blog reflecting on a SSSR conference in Boston. I titled the piece “Bifocal Vision” and argued that religious social scientists can study their topic of interest and not only retain their faith, but even enhance it. Not all people at the conference are religious. Not all of them study religious behavior per se — there’s a great interest in atheists at these conferences. But given the broad array of simultaneous presentation sessions going on throughout the meetings, you can pretty much create a pathway that fits your personal interests.
The first session I attended on Friday dealt with factors affecting religiosity. One paper examined the impact of peer relationships on religious behavior, finding that young religious males with at least one friend who likes to party suffer more anxiety around future family possibilities. My friend Blake Kent presented on data from two different surveys that linked nurses and their children in two points of time, exploring the degree of similarity in religious affiliation. A third paper dealt with the infrastructure for supporting Canadian Muslim families dealing with social service agencies.
The second session looked at issues surrounding abortion following the Dobbs decision. Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, shared their newest data on generational differences in support of abortion. Ruth Braunstein described preliminary work done through a content analysis of comments to abortion stories on Fox News websites.1 Another presentation focused on the contrast between moral and legal arguments about abortion. The final piece looked at abortion through the lens of religious liberty and explored the question as to whether opponents of abortion bans may soon draw on religious liberty arguments in support of their cause.
After lunch with Blake, I attended a presentation on how students in Duke Seminary process their own faith journeys. This was of particular interest to my book project. The presenter found that students became increasingly comfortable with questioning and accepting of ambiguity and uncertainty. Similar to my own work, the modeling done by faculty seemed to be key — if they can face ambiguity and still be okay, so could the students.
The session I had been most anticipating occurred Friday afternoon. My friends David Swartz, Lisa Weaver Swartz, and Henry Zonio did a fascinating social scientific analysis of the February 2023 Asbury Revival. David, a historian, had done an archival study of a number of past revivals at Asbury (I think there were about six since the 1920s). He found similar descriptive patterns across the years. One could easily substitute comments from one time period with those of another. While revivals have the impression of being spontaneous, it is remarkable the ways in which they follow patterns when they occur. Henry shared some preliminary data on student interviews post-revival as well as documenting some important social control dynamics that were present. Lisa shared interview data from a host of administrative and senior staff positions on how what became a national phenomenon could be controlled in ways that protected the students and the institution. Another friend, Gerardo Marti, served as discussant.
Saturday morning was our session on Christian Universities. Following that, it was time for a walk to decompress.
After a networking lunch, I attended a session on The Nones. Aida Ramos and Josh Tom (part of our presentation) presented on Latino Nones, noting that most research on the non-religious were of whites. Paul Perl reported on analysis he had done about Catholic disaffection in the 1960s. Isaiah King presented a fascinating piece comparing the rise of the nones with the rise of non-denominational churches and suggesting both may relate to a significant decline in the authority of religious bodies.
The last parallel session I attended was an “author meets the critics session” about Wes Markofski’s “Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America”. I had been asked to review Wes’ previous book for the American Journal of Sociology a few years ago, so I wanted to see what the new book was about. Four different scholars shared their reflections on the book and posed very interesting questions. Then Wes got up an responded to many (but not all — there were a lot) of their questions. I was so impressed with the conversation that I bought the book on my Kindle halfway through the session.
Saturday’s meetings ended with a talk by the SSSR president Kraig Beyerlein of Notre Dame. Titled “The Social Betrayal of Religion”, his talk considered the family dynamics arising when a previously religious child becomes a None. How is this managed in the family? Do they become estranged or accommodate? I imagine you’d see the same family dynamics when young people join a cult or when previously nonreligious parents get converted.
Saturday evening was the annual Purdue PhD dinner gathering. Started by the late Jim Davidson, a professor we all shared in common, we try to do this every year. I’m from one of the oldest cohorts, back when there wasn’t really a focus on the sociology of religion at Purdue (I finished coursework in 1981 and the dissertation in 1986). The youngest person at the table was a first year grad student. It was great to sense the continuity over the decades.
There were more sessions on Sunday morning. But given the approaching nine-hour drive I knew I had ahead of me, I skipped out so we could hit the road early.
It was a great meeting. And it was wonderful to spend time with friends I’ve known from meetings over the years. I don’t know how regularly I’ll be attending (not having any institutional money to support me) but Pittsburgh is tempting me already.
I really liked this one because I’d tried something similar in responses to Washington Post editorials about ten years ago.