John Bartkowski
Biographic Data
| ID | 120901 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Bartkowski |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Bartkowski |
| SIGNATURE | BARTKOWSKI J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at San Antonio |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1975-0421 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 104 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 104 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 20 |
Site engagement in implementation research
Size Matters? Penis Dissatisfaction and Gun Ownership in America
In this study, we formally examine the association between penis size dissatisfaction and gun ownership in America. The primary hypothesis, derived from the psychosexual theory of gun ownership, asserts that men who are more dissatisfied with the size of their penises will be more likely to personally own guns. To test this hypothesis, we used data collected from the 2023 Masculinity, Sexual Health, and Politics ( MSHAP) survey, a national probab…
(Un)holy Smokes? Religion and Traditional and E-Cigarette Use in the United States
Youth Suicide Prevention Programming among the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians
Suicide continues to be a leading cause of mortality for young people. Given persistent intersecting forms of disadvantage, Native American adolescents are especially vulnerable to mental health adversities and other suicide risk factors. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (MBCI) implemented the Choctaw Youth Resilience Initiative (CYRI), a five-year SAMHSA-funded project that began in 2019. This study uses Choctaw student pre-test/post-test…
Effects of substance use treatment on recidivism for youth in need of treatment
Results of a national survey of substance use treatment services for youth under community supervision
The Legacy of Blood Atonement? Gauging Mormon Support for the Death Penalty
American support for the death penalty has declined over time, but conservative religious groups have exhibited more favorable attitudes toward this practice than their mainline religious and secular peers. Scholars have generally overlooked Latter-day Saint (LDS, Mormon) support for capital punishment. However, this faith tradition is a case worthy of careful examination. Historically, LDS leadership was supportive of the death penalty, which wa…
Why Religion Is Good for American Democracy
Minding Mental Health
Suicidal ideation and deaths among children and adolescents have seen an unprecedented rise over the last ten years, recently further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This research explores mental health professionals’ approaches to delivering suicide prevention treatment services. Using insights from Giddens’ structuration theory, the study examines licensed mental health professionals’ (1) reflections on suicide prevention trainings for th…
Religion and Help-Seeking
Religious affiliation and attendance have been shown to affect various facets of mental health, including the willingness to seek mental health assistance; however, little is known about how theological beliefs influence people's assessments of religious and secular mental health assistance options. Prior research using theological conservatism (beliefs about scripture, sin, and salvation) has conceptualized this perspective as being a schema in …
Conservative Protestantism, Sexual Insecurity, and Masculine Discrepancy Stress
Are conservative Protestant men especially insecure about their sexual prowess and masculinity? A recent state-level analysis by Perry and Whitehead suggests that they are. In this study, we use national data from the 2021 Crime, Health, and Politics Survey to formally test whether conservative Protestant men are more concerned with their sexual abilities and masculinity than other men. Bivariate and multivariate binary logistic and ordinary leas…
Sexual Dysfunction and Gun Ownership in America
Although there has been no direct empirical evidence linking sexual dysfunction (SD) with gun ownership, speculation has been widespread and persistent for decades. In this paper, we formally examine the association between SD and gun ownership. Our primary hypothesis, derived from the psychosexual theory of gun ownership, asserts that men experiencing SD are more likely to personally own guns than other men. To test this hypothesis, we used rece…
Rival Bodies
Women's bodybuilding has attracted attention from gender researchers. However, increasingly popular fitness shows that feature different competitive tracks-bikini and figure-have garnered very limited scholarly consideration. This study draws on interview data from twenty bikini and figure competitors as well as ethnographic research conducted at several prominent bodybuilding shows in Texas with fitness competition tracks. Our investigation prov…
Religion, Families, and Health
Religion is a major social institution in the United States. While the scientific community has experienced a resurgence in the idea that there are important linkages between religion and family life and religion and health outcomes, this area of study is still in its early stages of development, scattered across multiple disciplines, and of uneven quality. To date, no book has featured both reviews of the literature and new empirical findings th…
Substance use prevention services in juvenile justice and behavioral health
Birth Control Battles
Those who fail to learn from history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. Birth Control Battles is a comprehensive historical analysis of how race, class, and religion intertwined in remarkably complicated ways to shape American reproductive politics from the Depression era into the 1960s. Interestingly, I am writing this review on the same day that the Supreme Court narrowly voted to strike down a Louisiana law designed to impose significant re…
The Mindful Elite
Islamic Strangers
Using nationally representative survey data from the 2011 Pew Muslim American Survey, this study investigates how the combined effects of religiosity, personal networks, and attitudes toward American society shape the subjective identities of Muslims residing in the United States. We draw on social identity theory, Simmel’s notion of the “stranger,” and past research on subjective identity among faith groups to examine U.S. Muslim identity prefer…
Cowboy Christians, by Marie W. Dallam
Evangelicalism seems to have seeped into every nook and cranny of American culture. Solid evidence in support of this conclusion is masterfully provided in Cowboy Christians. This book at once delineates the historical contours of cowboy Christianity as it evolved in the American West and provides a sustained analysis of this cultural phenomenon’s contemporary manifestations. The book paints a compelling and credible portrait of cowboy Christians…
Negotiating Patient-Provider Power Dynamics in Distinct Childbirth Settings
Several studies have examined women’s perceptions and experiences of out-of-hospital births, that is, births that take place at home or in birthing centers overseen by midwives. However, White women have primarily been the subject of these investigations. Black women are underrepresented among mothers who have out-of-hospital births, yet they provide an intriguing case for this birthing practice, given their elevated maternal mortality rates and …
The Digital Divide among Parents and Their Emerging Adult Children
A great deal of previous research has examined the profound influence of digital communication technology (e.g., texting, videoconferencing, social media usage) on family life. However, few inquiries have explored the contours of technologically assisted communication using qualitative data collected from various family members. Our study breaks new ground by using interview data collected from a split sample of parents and their emerging adult c…
Mixed Blessing
Previous research has linked parental religiosity to a number of positive developmental characteristics in young children. This study introduces the concept of selective sanctification as a refinement to existing theory and, in doing so, adds to a small but growing body of longitudinal research on this topic. We explore how parents' religious attendance (for fathers, mothers, and couples) and the household religious environment (parent-child reli…
Scriptural Coping
This study develops and tests a theory of scriptural coping. Using elements from hermeneutic theory as our guide, we contend that (1) specific life exigencies will increase the likelihood of someone turning to scripture for relevant insights and (2) reading scripture for relevant insights will moderate associations between exigencies and psychological well-being. Analyzing nationally representative data from the 2012 General Social Survey (n = 1,…
Faith-Based Social Services
Faith in Rights
Veiled Submission
To Veil or Not to Veil
The increasingly pervasive practice of veiling among Muslim women has stimulated a great deal of scholarly investigation and debate. This study brings empirical evidence to bear on current debates about the meaning of the veil in Islam. This article first examines the conflicting meanings of the veil among Muslim religious elites and Islamic feminists. Although the dominant gender discourse among Muslim elites strongly favors this cultural practi…
Gender, Religious Tradition, and Biblical Literalism
Several studies examine biblical literalism to categorize Christian denominations and predict attitudes and behaviors. Yet, few studies have identified the predictors of literalist orientations. In this study, we use structuration theory and gender theory to develop hypotheses concerning gender differences in literalist ideologies based on the degree of organizational patriarchy among religious traditions. Analyses using two national data sets de…
Love Thy Neighbor? Moral Communities, Civic Engagement, and Juvenile Homicide in Rural Areas
While juvenile homicide garnered a tremendous amount of attention from the general public, the media, and policymakers around 1990, macro-level research examining intercommunity variations in juvenile homicide is generally sparse. In addition, most studies addressing this topic focus on urban areas, neglecting the equally important issue of juvenile homicide in rural communities. This analysis extends prior research by investigating the structura…
Faith, Morality and Mortality
Although the past decade has witnessed increased usage of ecological data to map the community-level effects of religion, the vast majority of studies in this body of scholarship continue to be plagued by two key shortcomings. First, ecological research on religion is often conducted in an atheoretical manner, one that privileges the structural character of religion while failing to demonstrate sensitivity to the substance of collectively held re…
Scripture, Sin and Salvation
Using insights from ethnographic studies of conservative Protestant congregations, the authors propose and test a refined conceptual model of theological conservatism that accounts for three key components of a theologically conservative worldview: (1. epistemology, a belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God, (2. ontology, assumptions about the pervasiveness of human sinfulness, and (3. soteriology, the conviction that salvation is made po…
Distant Patriarchs or Expressive Dads? The Discourse and Practice of Fathering in Conservative Protestant Families
Despite the burgeoning research literature on paternal involvement, the relationship between religion and fatherhood has received remarkably little attention from empirical researchers. Our investigation illuminates this understudied dimension of fathering by examining how conservative Protestant gender ideologies impact paternal involvement in evangelical households. Our study begins with an examination of insider documents—nemely, gender and fa…
Beyond Biblical Literalism and Inerrancy
This study highlights the limitations associated with sociological conceptualizations of "biblical literalism" and "biblical inerrancy," and proposes an alternate theoretical model for illuminating conservative Protestant scriptural interpretations. In an effort to redress these conceptual limitations, I bring insights from the field of hermeneutics to bear on the literalism-inerrancy problem. Hermeneuticists maintain that a reader's interpretati…
Conservative Protestantism and the Division of Household Labor among Married Couples
To date, few studies have examined the role of religion, especially conservative (i.e., fundamentalist and evangelical) Protestantism, in shaping the division of housework. The authors begin by reviewing popular writings on gender and family life by contemporary conservative Protestants, focusing on the competing discourses of traditionalist and egalitarian evangelicals. Then, the authors analyze data on a large U.S. sample of married couples fro…
Attribution Style and Public Policy Attitudes Toward Gay Rights
Objective. This study examines the influence of beliefs about the cause of homo‐sexuality on public policy attitudes concerning gay rights. Methods. Using data from the 1995 Oklahoma City Survey, we examine how beliefs about homosexuality as either a lifestyle choice or biological predisposition affect levels of support for gay rights. Results. Consistent with current debates over gay rights, our study reveals a strong positive association betwee…
Religion and child development
Images of God and Public Support for Capital Punishment
This study argues that the nature and intensity of a person's relationship with God creates a transposable cognitive schema that shapes people's views toward public policies such as executing convicted murderers. In this context, we investigate whether Americans who report having a close personal relationship with a loving God are less likely to support the death penalty. We hypothesize that such a relationship tempers the tendency to see punitiv…
The Timing of First Marriage
Using survey data from a nationally representative sample, this article explores how marriage timing varies across major religious denominations. Survival analysis indicates that net of statistical controls, Catholics, moderate Protestants, conservative Protestants, and Mormons marry significantly earlier than their unaffiliated counterparts. This holds true for women and men. However, no statistical differences emerge between Jews, liberal Prote…
Divergent Models of Childrearing in Popular Manuals
While most recent discussions of “the battle over the family” have focused on conflicts over gender roles, this study focuses on contemporary debates over childrearing practices. This work centers on the challenge to mainstream “expert” childrearing ideas posed by James Dobson and other conservative Protestant family advocates. Our study compares the recommendations of mainstream childrearing experts with those advanced by their conservative Prot…
Are There Religious Variations in Domestic Violence
Religious variations in domestic violence remain understudied. Arguments are developed linking aspects of religious affiliation, practice, theology, and couples' religious (dis)similarities with domestic violence. These relationships are then examined via gender-specific models of data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH-1). The authors find that regular attendance at religious services is inversely associa…
Conservative Protestantism and the Parental Use of Corporal Punishment
Journal Article Conservative Protestantism and the Parental Use of Corporal Punishment Get access Christopher G. Ellison, Christopher G. Ellison University of Texas at Austin Direct correspondence to Christopher G. Ellison, Department of Sociology, 336 Burdine Hall, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1088. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John P. Bartkowski, John P. Bartkowski University of Tex…
Debating Patriarchy
Theoretical paradigms that have called attention to the contemporary over the family suggest that religious conservatives in general, and evangelical Protestants in particular, are among the most vociferous defenders of a traditional patriarchal family structure. However, a handful of recent inquiries on contemporary evangelical spousal roles has suggested that conservative Protestants are not unanimous in their support for a patriarchal family s…
Trust in a 'Fallen World
Important questions remain about religion-based variations in the propensity to trust. A new perspective on the religion-trust nexus is proposed by examining Protestant theological conservatism as a moral framework reflected in personal convictions about scripture (the authoritativeness of the Bible), sin (beliefs in human depravity and the existence of hell), and salvation (the need for a born-again experience to be saved). Findings indicate tha…
Sex and Gender Traditionalism Among Conservative Protestants
Recent years have witnessed the resurgence of conservative Protestantism and its adherents' advocacy of gender traditionalism. Scholarship has traced conservative Protestant women's support for gender traditionalism to biblical inerrancy while linking conservative Protestant men's support for gender traditionalism to their denominational affiliation. Our study revisits this issue with more recent data, more sophisticated analytical techniques (st…
Breaking Walls, Raising Fences
Journal Article Breaking Walls, Raising Fences: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Accountability among the Promise Keepers Get access John P. Bartkowski John P. Bartkowski * Mississippi State University * Direct correspondence to John P. Bartkowski, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, e-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works…
Faith, Race‐Ethnicity, and Public Policy Preferences
Research has demonstrated that white conservative Protestants are more opposed to abortion than their Catholic counterparts. At the same time, conservative Protestantism has made significant inroads among U.S. Latinos. This study augments existing research on religion and racial‐ethnic variations in abortion attitudes by comparing levels of support for legalized abortion among Catholic and conservative Protestant Latinos. Data are drawn from a na…
One step forward, one step back
God Imagery and Opposition to Abortion and Capital Punishment
Abortion and the death penalty are two of the most contentious issues in American public life. Previous scholarship has documented religious variations in attitudes toward each of these hotly contested issues. However, scant research has explored how religious factors affect opposition to both abortion and capital punishment, two key elements of a consistent life ethic. This study offers a partial test of religious support for the consistent life…
The Role of Cohabitation in Remarriage
Using 3 subsamples of remarried respondents (n =1,583, 971, and 926) in the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, this study investigates how different types of cohabitation, especially postdivorce cohabitation, affect the timing and quality of remarriage in the United States. Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis indicates that postdivorce cohabitation in general and postdivorce cohabitation with multiple partners in…
Biblical Literalism and Sexual Morality in Comparative Perspective
For some time now, scholars have explored the social consequences of theologically conservative worldviews, particularly biblical literalism. Using international data, this study examines how a literalist schema influences attitudes toward sexual morality across 15 countries. Our comparative inquiry permits us to explore whether or not the efficacy of a literalist schema varies when it is transposed across such diverse cultural contexts, thereby …
Spare the Rod…, or Spare the Child? Divergent Perspectives on Conservative Protestant Child Discipline
Divergent Models of Childrearing in Popular Manuals
While most recent discussions of “the battle over the family” have focused on conflicts over gender roles, this study focuses on contemporary debates over childrearing practices. This work centers on the challenge to mainstream “expert” childrearing ideas posed by James Dobson and other conservative Protestant family advocates. Our study compares the recommendations of mainstream childrearing experts with those advanced by their conservative Prot…
Beyond Biblical Literalism and Inerrancy
This study highlights the limitations associated with sociological conceptualizations of "biblical literalism" and "biblical inerrancy," and proposes an alternate theoretical model for illuminating conservative Protestant scriptural interpretations. In an effort to redress these conceptual limitations, I bring insights from the field of hermeneutics to bear on the literalism-inerrancy problem. Hermeneuticists maintain that a reader's interpretati…
Conservative Protestantism and the Parental Use of Corporal Punishment
Journal Article Conservative Protestantism and the Parental Use of Corporal Punishment Get access Christopher G. Ellison, Christopher G. Ellison University of Texas at Austin Direct correspondence to Christopher G. Ellison, Department of Sociology, 336 Burdine Hall, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1088. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John P. Bartkowski, John P. Bartkowski University of Tex…
God Meets Gaia in Austin, Texas
Gender Equality and American Jews
Debating Patriarchy
Theoretical paradigms that have called attention to the contemporary over the family suggest that religious conservatives in general, and evangelical Protestants in particular, are among the most vociferous defenders of a traditional patriarchal family structure. However, a handful of recent inquiries on contemporary evangelical spousal roles has suggested that conservative Protestants are not unanimous in their support for a patriarchal family s…
Changing of the gods
A growing number of recent studies have called attention to a series of striking contradictions in contemporary evangelical family relations. This study draws on insights from Michel Foucault's theory of discourse in order to investigate the historical forces which underlie these contemporary contradictions. An indashdepth analysis of various secondary historical sources reveals that contemporary evangelicals are the heirs to a two-century-old re…
Claims-Making and Typifications of Voodoo as a Deviant Religion
A small number of researchers and social commentators have called attention to negative perceptions about voodoo in U.S. cultural discourse. Yet, remarkably little scholarship has examined the nature, scope, and source of these perceptions in a systematic fashion. In this paper, I use key insights from social constructionism to examine three different typifications of voodoo as broadcast by the U.S. news media. I begin by outlining the constructi…
One step forward, one step back
Are There Religious Variations in Domestic Violence
Religious variations in domestic violence remain understudied. Arguments are developed linking aspects of religious affiliation, practice, theology, and couples' religious (dis)similarities with domestic violence. These relationships are then examined via gender-specific models of data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH-1). The authors find that regular attendance at religious services is inversely associa…
Re-Forming the Body
Disquiet in the Land
Contemporary American Religion
Breaking Walls, Raising Fences
Journal Article Breaking Walls, Raising Fences: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Accountability among the Promise Keepers Get access John P. Bartkowski John P. Bartkowski * Mississippi State University * Direct correspondence to John P. Bartkowski, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, e-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works…
Conservative Protestant Child Discipline
Journal Article Conservative Protestant Child Discipline: The Case of Parental Yelling Get access John P. Bartkowski, John P. Bartkowski Mississippi State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar W. Bradford Wilcox W. Bradford Wilcox Princeton University Please direct correspondence to W. Bradford Wilcox, Center for Research on Child Well-being, 221 Wallace Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544…
To Veil or Not to Veil
The increasingly pervasive practice of veiling among Muslim women has stimulated a great deal of scholarly investigation and debate. This study brings empirical evidence to bear on current debates about the meaning of the veil in Islam. This article first examines the conflicting meanings of the veil among Muslim religious elites and Islamic feminists. Although the dominant gender discourse among Muslim elites strongly favors this cultural practi…
Distant Patriarchs or Expressive Dads? The Discourse and Practice of Fathering in Conservative Protestant Families
Despite the burgeoning research literature on paternal involvement, the relationship between religion and fatherhood has received remarkably little attention from empirical researchers. Our investigation illuminates this understudied dimension of fathering by examining how conservative Protestant gender ideologies impact paternal involvement in evangelical households. Our study begins with an examination of insider documents—nemely, gender and fa…
Godly Masculinities
At thepeak ofitsprominence, thePromise Keepershadattractedcriticism [roln manyquarters: More recently, this?i.'angeliu,1Ilrlen5movement has stntggledtoretain thevisibilityitonceenjoyed. Using insightsfrom culturaltheory, I analyzea select sample ofbest-selling men5manuals repnsentingvanousadoicegenres uuhin this movement: Ia1gttethat PK genderdiscourses haoegicen rise tofourefuangelicalarchetypes ofgodly manhood' theRationalPatriarch{traduional m…
Remaking the Godly Marriage
Remaking the Godly Marriage
Remaking the Godly Marriage provides a careful and insightful portrait of gender in contemporary conservative evangelicalism that would serve as an accessible text for seminars on gender and religion or contemporary evangelicalism. Most significantly, Bartkowski's focus on how identity and responsibilities are carefully negotiated between men and women takes seriously the sociological claim that gender is relational and thereby fills a gap in the…
Spatial Variations in Church Burnings
In recent years, church burnings in the South have attracted a great deal of attention. Many commentators have charged that they are a product of strained race relations throughout the South, and particularly of severe racial tensions in Southern rural areas. In this study we evaluate these claims. We begin by mapping the spatial coordinates of recorded church burnings from 1990 to 1997, and find that church arsons indeed are concentrated in the …
Financing American Religion
Conservative Protestantism and the Division of Household Labor among Married Couples
To date, few studies have examined the role of religion, especially conservative (i.e., fundamentalist and evangelical) Protestantism, in shaping the division of housework. The authors begin by reviewing popular writings on gender and family life by contemporary conservative Protestants, focusing on the competing discourses of traditionalist and egalitarian evangelicals. Then, the authors analyze data on a large U.S. sample of married couples fro…
Seasonality of Sexual Debut
This study brings together insights from two bodies of scholarship that have heretofore existed as parallel research literatures, namely, research on the social antecedents of sexual debut and scholarship on the seasonality of coital activity. The authors use the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to discover two seasonal peaks in the reported onset of first intercourse, one in the early summertime months for adolescents in general …
Sociology (88 works) · Political science (73 works) · Psychology (59 works) · Law (51 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (43 works) · Social Psychology (41 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (37 works) · Gender Studies (34 works) · Philosophy (31 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (29 works)