Escaping Earth: Human Spaceflight as Religion

What if we viewed the history of human spaceflight somewhat less through the lens of Cold War politics, which admittedly was central to the race to the Moon, but more as an expression of what might be called a religion of spaceflight? There seems to be a deeply religious quality to advocacy for the investment in and support for human space exploration, lending to the endeavor of a “higher purpose” that helps to explain both the generous nature of the actual investment and the ultimate unwillingness of Americans to eviscerate space budgets despite less than full support for space exploration. This article examines religious conceptions as a means of analyzing what might be termed a “space gospel.” I lay out here the proposition that human spaceflight may be viewed as a religion with similar attributes to those present in mainstream religious denominations. This approach to exploring the history of human spaceflight offers a different and useful frame of understanding that broadens basic conceptions about this aspect of the human past.     

Religion and National Identity in America and Europe

America and Europe have had very different religious experiences, and these differences have continuing consequences. In America, the preponderance of Reform Protestantism gave rise to religious and political pluralism, a religious marketplace, and the continuing vitality of the churches. In Europe, the dominance of state churches gave rise to the eventual rejection of these churches and religions when the traditional political and social authorities were rejected, particularly by the Generation of 1968. However, Europe’s extreme secularization has rendered it confused and ineffective in dealing with the new religious challenge posed by Muslim immigrant communities.

American Patriotism, National Identity, and Political Involvement

Researchers disagree over the definition, measurement, and expected political consequences of American patriotism, a situation that is fueled by the absence of a strong theoretical research foundation. We develop and evaluate a new measure of national attachment that is grounded in social identity theory ( Tajfel and Turner 1979 ), drawing on data from three distinct sources: two studies of undergraduate students and the 1996 General Social Survey (GSS). Confirmatory factor analyses provide clear evidence that national identity is distinct from other measures of national attachment including symbolic, constructive, and uncritical patriotism, and nationalism. National identity has a number of other good measurement properties when compared to existing measures: it receives equal endorsement from conservatives and liberals (unlike most other measures which exhibit an ideological bias), develops with time spent in the United States among immigrants, and most importantly is the only measure of national attachment to predict political interest and voter turnout in both student and adult samples, consistent with the predictions of social identity theory. In that sense, the national identity measure outperforms all other measures of national attachment and provides unambiguous evidence that a strong American identity promotes civic involvement.     

Ambivalent heroes: Russian defectors and American power in the early Cold War

This article uses recently declassified CIA documents to examine Soviet defectors of the 1950s, with a focus on US programs to court, receive, and utilize defectors against their homeland in espionage and psychological warfare operations. Eschewing the tendency at the time and in later scholarship to emphasize defectors’ ideological motivations, the piece argues that defectors often crossed over the Iron Curtain for reasons of self-preservation or self-advancement. Once in the West, defectors were mistrusted and badly assimilated into host societies. For these reasons, Soviet defectors rarely proved to be the committed anti-communists that American policy-makers expected them to be.     

Religion,Violence and Cities: An Introduction

Abstract

The catalyst for this special issue was a symposium entitled Religion, Violence and Cities, held under the auspices of a five year inter-disciplinary research project on ethno-nationally divided cities.¹1. Conflict and Cities and the Contested State: Everyday Life and the Possibilities of Transformation in Belfast, Jerusalem and Other Divided Cities (2007–2013), ESRC Large Grant No. RES-060-25-0015. Principal Investigators were: Wendy Pullan (University of Cambridge), Liam O'Dowd and James Anderson (Queen's University, Belfast) and Mick Dumper (University of Exeter). The ‘Contested State’ of the title refers to states where the central political dynamic concerns the boundaries, or even the existence, of the state itself. While this project expressly addressed cities divided by ethno-national conflict, it was clear from the beginning that there was an important religious dimension to such conflicts in most, if not all, the cities being studied.²2. The two main cities studied were Belfast and Jerusalem while other cities researched by project personnel included Vukovar (see Baillie, 2013 Baillie, B. (2013) Structural Violence and the (Re)construction of Vukovar's Churches, Space and Polity, 17(3). [Google Scholar], this issue), Beirut, Kirkuk, Nicosia, Mostar, and Brussels. The rationale of the Special Issue is to examine how this religious dimension exacerbates (or moderates) urban violence within a broad comparative context. Although three of the following articles are informed by Project research, we draw the net wider to encompass a broader geographical spread from the Balkans, the Middle East, Nigeria and Japan.     

Rockets,Astronauts, and Shrines: Representations of Spaceflight in Sacred Visual Art and Architecture

This article examines the relationship between space exploration and sacred visual art, demonstrating that religious iconography and church architecture evolved by assimilating humankind's entry into the physical heavens as a living parable. This is proven by the presence of space exploration imagery within places of worship—from a church building inspired by a payload fairing to inclusion of space exploration milestones as historical landmarks, from astronauts being chosen as depictions of Christian virtues to lunar material being included in church windows, and from a space shuttle being painted on a Christian Orthodox church wall to a space hotel being represented on a Buddhist temple. The incidences of space themes in religious visual arts, as well as the fervor of reception, vary nonetheless among denominations.     

That Old-Time Religion: Efficiency, Benchmarking, and Productivity

Books Reviewed:
M. Berman, Productivity in Public and Nonprofit Organizations: Strategies and Techniques
Patricia Keehley, Steven Medlin, Sue MacBride, and Laura Longmire, Benchmarking for Best Practices in the Public Sector: Achieving Performance Breakthroughs in Federal, State and Local Agencies
David N. Ammons, Municipal Benchmarks: Assessing Local Performance and Establishing Community Standards     

Moderate Secularism, Religion as Identity and Respect for Religion

Political secularism takes many forms but a fundamental distinction is between radical and moderate kinds. The latter is a genuine secularism and not just a failure to take secularism to its logical conclusion. The failure to appreciate this obscures the secularism that exists in western Europe. Namely, an accommodation of organised religion which sees it as a potential public good or national resource (not just a private benefit), which the state can in some circumstances assist to realise—even through an 'established' church. I adumbrate five types of reasons the state might be interested in religion: truth, danger, utility, identity and respect. The challenge facing such secularism today is whether it can be pluralised or multiculturalised, in particular whether it can accommodate Muslims. A ground for optimism is the respect that some people, especially some Muslims, have for religions other than their own.     

Creating Shared Responsibility through Respect for Military Culture: The Russian and American Cases

The key problem in civil‐military relations in established polities such as Russia and the United States is not civilian control of the military, but rather how to create a symbiotic relationship of “shared responsibility” between senior military officers and civilian leaders. In such a situation, civilian leaders obtain much needed expertise from the military, but ultimately remain in control. The keys to symbiotic civil‐military relations are a desire on the part of military officers to work with civilians and civilian respect for military culture. When civilians respect military culture—that is, the military’s (1) devotion to clear executive leadership, (2) commitment to corporate identity, (3) drive to increase professional expertise, and (4) dedication to political responsibility—a system of shared responsibility is likely to emerge. This thesis is elaborated by comparing recent civil‐military relations in Russia and the United States.     

Identity Salience, Identity Acceptance, and Racial Policy Attitudes: American National Identity as a Uniting Force

Political science has paid a great deal of attention to sources of intergroup conflict, but the discipline has focused less on forces that bring people together and lead them to transcend group boundaries. This study presents evidence that attachment to a shared superordinate identity can improve intergroup relations by reducing the social distance between people of different racial groups. Using a survey experiment, this research shows that making a superordinate identity salient increased support for a tax increase. The effects of the identity salience treatment are compared to a policy particularism treatment in terms of effect size and their interaction with each other. The size and direction of the identity salience effect is affected by the degree of respondents' acceptance of the proffered identity. Implications for social identity theory, racial policy attitudes, and American national identity are discussed.     

Religion,Sectarianism, and Democracy: Theory and Evidence from Lebanon

Political Behavior - Why does religion sometimes increase support for democracy and sometimes do just the opposite? Using data from an original survey conducted in Lebanon, I present and test a...     

Religion,liberty and economic development: An empirical investigation

The empirical investigations conducted for this paper show that one can not accept the null hypothesis that religion and liberty are not related to development. Judeo-Christianity in particular appears to an important determinant of economic development. This is explained in part by its fostering of the private ownership of property. Nations with the Judeo-Christian values are more likely to have political democracies that are conductive to economic development. Capitalist economies with Judeo-Christian democracy are more likely to have higher levels of economic development.