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This chapter addresses the expression of Hindu women's religiosity through music and dance. It is argued that in contemporary Hinduism the performing arts, which are essentially forms of religious performance, may serve as vehicles not only for women's religious expression, but also for dynamic social commentary and reform. Examples include dancers like Mallika Sarabhai and Chandralekha, who use dance to highlight women's issues and to express themes of anguish and strength. As authors, performers, and consumers of the performing arts, women may engage music and dance both to express their own subjectivities and to help effect social change.

This concluding chapter argues that based on the religious trends documented in this book, no indicator of traditional religious belief or practice is going up. There is much continuity and some decline. There is more religious diversity, there are shifting fortunes for liberal and conservative Protestant denominations, and there are troubling signs about the state of religious leadership. Moreover, changes are occurring inside congregations, and there is a tighter connection between religious service attendance and political, social, and religious conservatism. There is also more diffuse spirituality, but this diffuse spirituality should not be mistaken for an increase in traditional religiosity. As such, if there is a trend, it is toward less religion.

Following the same youth over about three years of their adolescence, this chapter examines various dynamics in religiosity during adolescence. First, it looks at average change as well as individual trajectories in multiple measures of three dimensions of religiosity: conduct, content, and centrality. Then, combining these measures to consider religiosity more holistically, the chapter considers the likelihood of an adolescent’s changing religious profiles over time. Quotes from youth who typify the five most common types of religious change in adolescence are provided to illustrate these dynamics. This chapter reveals a reasonable degree of stability in adolescent religiosity, but describes the moderate refinements that often take place usually involving decreases, but sometimes increases, in certain dimensions of religiosity.

This chapter describes another important trend involving religion, liberalism, and conservatism. Actively religious Americans are more politically and socially conservative than less religious Americans. Regular churchgoing, moreover, now correlates even more strongly with some types of political and social conservatism than it did several decades ago. Rather than being associated with a particular type of religion, certain kinds of political and social conservatism have become more tightly linked to religiosity itself. As such, the most and least religiously active people are further apart attitudinally than they were several decades ago, but this trend does not yet warrant a declaration of culture war.

This chapter seeks to challenge the myth of the antireligious Enlightenment by presenting an account of Enlightenment religiosity, an account anchored by three core ideas shared by a wide number of Enlightenment intellectuals from different countries. These include the unity thesis, morality thesis, and toleration.

This chapter examines the shape of contemporary religiosity with respect to the three identifying characteristics of Enlightenment religiosity: the unity thesis, the morality thesis, and toleration. These observations and comments are then used to support the claim that the spirit of Enlightenment religiosity, suitably tempered by two hundred years' hindsight, has much to offer us.

The consumption of many different plants by our ancestors lead to the discovery of the important role played by the neurotransmitter serotonin in your brain. Chemicals in these plants that interfere with the function of serotonin can produce vivid and colorful hallucinations, migraine headaches, anxiety, depression, sleep, and death. Consumption of grain or corn that is contaminated with an ergot fungus may have been responsible for the death of thousands of people in ancient Europe while the consumption of mushrooms in ancient Mexico may have lead to the appearance of various religious ceremonies that defined specific cultures. The merging and mixing of sensory processes, for example, sights that produce sounds or smells that have color, must have been very frightening to our ancestors. The experience often took on a mystical or religious interpretation in order to make sense of what we now call a hallucination. It is possible that ritualistic manipulation of serotonin neurons in the brain played a role in the individual expressions of religiosity across cultures. Today, we mostly focus upon the role of serotonin in the control of mood and migraines.

This introductory chapter discusses the continuity in American religiosity between 1972 and 2008. Some might see American optimism reflected in the fact that more people believe in heaven than in hell. Others might see American individualism reflected in the fact that more people think that God is concerned about human beings personally than say that they know God exists, or in the fact that following one's conscience ranks higher than following the teachings of one's religion on the list of what it means to be a good Christian or Jew. The chapter emphasizes that these items all share the remarkable characteristic that none of them has changed much in recent decades. By world standards, Americans remain remarkably religious in both belief and practice.

This chapter explores Niʿmat Sidqi's literary and social vision of Islam through her writings. It looks at all her works but focuses mainly on Muʿjizat al-Qurʾan (Miracle of the Qurʾan) published in 1971. Her vision of the Qurʾan grounds religiosity in the human body and the sensory realm as the site in which faith is embodied, lived, and practiced. Sidqi uses words for “vision” (baṭar and baṭīra) that most strongly evoke the physical dimensions of spiritual seeing, more than words like shahāda (witnessing) or ruʾya (vision). In Sidqi, physical and spiritual seeing are deeply contingent.

This first chapter introduces the main themes of the book through quotes from two girls that were interviewed in 2003 and then again in 2005. The survey and semi-structured interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion, on which the book’s analyses are based, are described. Finally, a road map for the subsequent chapters describing the contours and dynamics of adolescent religiosity is presented.

This chapter clarifies the meaning of individual religiosity, appropriate methods of analysis for religiosity’s multidimensional nature, and the social contexts in which adolescent religiosity develop. Theoretical developments in the sociology of religion are reviewed to establish a sound conceptualization of religion. Next, the strengths and weaknesses of various methodological approaches are described. This leads to a discussion of the appropriateness of a person-based approach, as taken in this book, for studying the contours and dynamics of adolescent religiosity. The approach is illustrated through the introduction of a religious mosaic metaphor. The chapter ends by describing the social contexts, identities, and experiences in which these religious mosaics or profiles develop during adolescence, including family and peer contexts, religious institutions, sociodemographic characteristics, youth temperament, and unique life experiences.

Five profiles of religiosity that describe the landscape of adolescent religiosity in America are presented in this chapter: the Abiders, Adapters, Assenters, Avoiders, and Atheists. The five profiles come from a latent class analysis conducted with the NSYR survey data, and the stories and quotes from five youth who participated in the NSYR semi-structured interviews are used to illustrate each profile in depth. Discussion of these five profiles of religiosity reveals that while there are some youth with religious profiles or mosaics that are characterized by very high religiosity in every dimension measured (Abiders), or very low religiosity in every dimension measured (Atheists), the other adolescents have pieced together religious mosaics that rely on certain dimensions of religion and not others. This chapter provides an enriched understanding of the forms of religiosity as lived by American adolescents.

Having previously delineated the religious characteristics of the five profiles of religiosity presented throughout this book, this chapter describes other nonreligious characteristics of youth who belong to each of the five classes. This provides more insight into the demographic characteristics of these youth and suggests how families, peers, and religious institutions may contribute to how youth live out their religiosity. The chapter also examines associations between membership in the five classes and outcomes such as deviant behavior, health, and well-being. In other words, this chapter investigates other life situations and characteristics that are related to how adolescents live out their religiosity.