The Conflict Between Secular and Religious Narratives in the United States by Sumser John;

Author:Sumser, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conservative Christians actively seek to homogenize their social networks, thus removing any social divisions and increasing the gap between themselves and their perceptions of outsiders. For fundamentalists, “communing with persons of other faiths or people who do not adhere to a faith is seen to create the potential for spiritual pollution and temptation to sin.”[44] Research has shown that religious fundamentalism is related to negative attitudes toward African Americans, women, communists, and, of course, homosexuals.[45] Darren Sherkat’s research strongly suggests that the fundamentalist distrust of outsiders is responsible for the routine underrepresentation of conservatives in public opinion polls.[46] James Waller, a social psychologist looking at the idea of evil, cites researchers who have found that the greater the homogeneity and social isolation of a group the more likely their views are to become extreme.[47] Looking at the research on group identity, Peter Burke and Jan Stets write that one reason people seek group membership in order to reduce uncertainty and, once members, they “act in concert, identifying and evaluating themselves and others in the group positively and identifying and negatively evaluating others not in the group. From this develops a sense of ‘we’ and ‘us’ (toward the in-group), and ‘them’ and ‘they’ (toward the out-group).”[48]

This sense of pollution and of evil slipping in from outside the community was seen in the controversy in Utah over the film Brokeback Mountain. The film, which told the story of a homosexual relationship between two cowboys, was pulled from one of the major theater chains in Utah. According to Brenda Cooper and Edward C. Pease, who analyzed how the controversy played out in the Utahan newspapers, those who supported the ban on the film “all referenced the decadent morals of both sexual minorities and Hollywood. Their primary argument was that Utah’s culture needed protecting from immoral outside influences.”[49] And this was not seen as simply a clash of cultures, but as a deliberate attack on Utah’s conservative religious culture. One letter to the editor said that the “agenda of the entertainment industry (is) to degrade the morals in our society.”[50] Thus, it was not that secular morality could erode religious morality (i.e., that some people would find it more attractive), but that the moral content of Hollywood films was designed to undermine more traditional views; it was part of their agenda. This sense of a conspiracy to undermine traditional values is seen by the sociologist Steve Bruce as “a simple continuation of a style of thought which lies at the heart of most traditional religions.”[51] The creation of insiders and outsiders that is such a central aspect of religion, Bruce is saying, combined with the tendency to insert agency into all explanations readily shades into the projection of enemies, plots, and paranoia onto all experience.

Social identity theory, which was developed to explain social conflicts and biases, both reinforces Douglas’s grid idea and sets it in motion. The grid is not static, not simply a place in which people find themselves, but is instead a process in which forms of life are created and sustained.

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