R H Williams
Biographic Data
| ID | 21483 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R H Williams |
| GIVEN NAMES | R H |
| FAMILY NAME | Williams |
| SIGNATURE | WILLIAMS R H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loyola University Chicago |
| ORCID | 0009-0000-8582-4989 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 93 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 480 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 93 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1940 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
“This Is Not a Space for Politics”
This article examines the meanings and values attached to an immigrant church by exploring the contents of intergenerational conflict within Christian Indian American families in the United States. Using ethnographic research from two Indian Christian churches in the United States, we find that a source of intergenerational conflict concerns varying expectations of “proper behaviors” within the ethnic church. In examining these expectations, we f…
Meatpacking America
“Oh my name it means nothing, My age it means less. The country I come from, Is called the Midwest.” That is how Bob Dylan opened his 1964 masterpiece of protest song-writing, “With God on Our Side.” It is a song of anger, irony, tragedy, and sorrow, portrayed as coming from a generic person, of no particular name or age. The singer hails from the “Midwest”—as vaguely place-less as a geography as the character is socially unnamed. And yet, having…
Bellah, American Civil Religion, and the Dynamics of Public Meanings
Kirsten A. Grønbjerg and Steven Rathgeb Smith
Article Kirsten A. Grønbjerg and Steven Rathgeb Smith: The Changing Dynamic of Government–Nonprofit Relationships: Advancing the Field(s) was published on January 1, 2022 in the journal Nonprofit Policy Forum (volume 13, issue 1)
Let's Call Ourselves the Super Elite”
The mid‐twentieth century “collective behavior” school asserted that (1) collective behavior—the actions of crowds, movements, and other gatherings—had distinct dynamics; (2) such action was often “nonrational,” or not governed by cost‐benefit calculation; and (3) collective behavior could pose a threat to liberal democracy because of these features. While this tradition fell out of scholarly favor, the 2016 election has given us empirical reason…
Religion and progressive politics in the United States
In recent decades, scholars interested in the role of religion in American public life have largely focused on the Christian Right or the role of religion in civic life. Compared to these extensive literatures, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of religion in liberal/progressive politics. Progressive religious voices are more widespread and more racially, socioeconomically, and religiously diverse than is typically recognized.…
Culture and Movements
Culture,” in its various manifestations, has been increasingly useful to the understanding of social movements. The sociology of social movements has focused on culture and its role in three basic sets of issues: explanation of social movement formation and emergence; the processes and dynamics that allow movements to sustain their actions over time; and the impact movements have on their wider social contexts
Becoming Arab in London
A review of Ramy M.K. Aly's book, Becoming Arab in London: Performativity and the Undoing of Identity written by Rhys H. Williams
Visualizing Religion in National Identity
Sociology of Religion and Religious Studies
This concluding comment draws upon the common themes articulated by the preceding contributors about how Sociology of Religion and Religious Studies can influence each other, as well as considering some of the obstacles to that. It concludes with some intellectual suggestions for furthering some of our common interests
American Identity and the Politics of Multiculturalism
"Church" in Black and White
The religious lives of young adults have generally been investigated by examining what young people believe and their self-reported religious practices. Far less is known about young adults' organizational involvement and its impact on religious identities and ideas about religious commitment. Using data from site visit observations of religious congregations and organizations, and individual and focus group interviews with college-age black and …
Civil religious contention in Cairo, Illinois
Civil Religion
Who “They” Are Matters
We investigate the relationship between stereotypes of immigrants and assessments of the impact of immigration on U.S. society. Our analysis exploits a split-ballot survey of registered voters in Ohio, who were asked to evaluate both the characteristics of one of four randomly assigned immigrant groups and perceived impacts of immigration. We find that associations between impact assessments and stereotypes of Middle Eastern, Asian, and European …
Religion and Multiculturalism
The relationship between religion and multiculturalism is complex, depending on definitions of the key concepts and the societal contexts in which it occurs. Unlike Western Europe and the United Kingdom, where discussions of multiculturalism usually involve religion, such discussions in the United States are more likely to focus on race, ethnicity, and immigration. Nonetheless, issues of religious diversity, pluralism, and multiculturalism are de…
Civil Religion and National Politics in a Neoliberal Era
Civil religion, or the connection of the nation‐state, its history, destiny, and people, to understandings of transcendence or divinity, is in crisis both as a theoretical concept and as a politico‐cultural phenomenon. The crisis has been brought about by the weakened capacity of the nation‐state to generate collective identity and a version of ‘charismatic’ authority. We argue that this has resulted in a shift from the widely accepted conceptual…
Religion on the Edge
Faith-Based HIV Prevention and Counseling Programs
North American sociology of religion
We assess the current state of sociology of religion, particularly in the United States, for the extent to which a "critical sociology of religion" currently exists and how it might look if it did. We focus particular attention on two areas of inquiry: religion and health; and religion and violence
Possibilities in the critical sociology of religion
Civil Religion and the Cultural Politics of National Identity in Obama's America
American civil religion (ACR) burst on to the scholarly scene in 1967, and has been periodically revived as a source of analytic insight and normative hope since that time. It posited a universalist, prophetic, nonsectarian faith, referenced on the nation, that served as both a source of unity for the American people and a discursive resource for political leaders and protest movements. Using recent political events as illustrative cases, I argue…
Stereotypes of U . S . Immigrants from Four Global Regions
Objective This study explores variation in stereotypes of U . S . immigrants from L atin A merica, the M iddle E ast, E urope, and A sia. Method We exploit a split‐ballot design in two waves of the O hio P oll to test hypotheses about effects of contextual and respondent‐level characteristics on immigrant stereotypes. Results Respondents generally rated A sian immigrants most positively and L atin A merican immigrants most negatively, with E urop…
Immigration and National Identity in Obama's America
The culture-war issues salient in US politics in the 1990s and early 2000s were typified by debates over the legality and morality of abortion and same-sex marriage. Immigration, in contrast, has been an intermittent issue, not as polarized as many others. That changed with the candidacy and then election of Barack Obama to the presidency. While anti-abortion and “pro-family” activism has continued, there is a new public focus on a vision of “Ame…
Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America
Reviewed by: Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations Rhys H. Williams (bio) Preserving Ethnicity Through Religion in America: Korean Protestants and Indian Hindus across Generations, by Pyong Gap Min. New York: New York University Press, 2010. X + 264 pp. $25.00 paper. ISBN-10: 0-8147-9586-4. The central empirical finding in Pyong Gap Min's carefully researched book is illustrated …
Constructing the Public Good
This essay argues for the usefulness of approaching social movement ideology as a set of “cultural resources” that can be understood in many of the same ways as are conventional structural resources. One important type of cultural resource is the rhetorical frame with which movements make public political claims. Using a specific substantive example of a cultural resource — rhetoric about the “public good” — I focus on the linkages between collec…
Hijab and American Muslim Women
Among Muslims living in the United States, Islamic religious practices are negotiated and adapted to a new culture. A visible and controversial symbol of Muslims' differences from dominant American Christianity is the hijab worn by many Muslim women. The decision to wear hijab occurs within a two-fold cultural context: (1) the assumption by many non-Muslims that hijab encapsulates Islam's inherent violation of women's “equal rights”; and (2) a wi…
Religion and Political Process in an American City
Two themes in the political culture of the United States relate the nation's politics and government to First is the sense of sacredness connected to the polity that is often termed civil religion. Second is the institutional separation of church and state, often turned into a normative separate spheres argument distancing religion from political activity. That these seemingly contradictory themes coexist is evidence for the interpretive openness…
Civil Religion and the Cultural Politics of National Identity in Obama's America
American civil religion (ACR) burst on to the scholarly scene in 1967, and has been periodically revived as a source of analytic insight and normative hope since that time. It posited a universalist, prophetic, nonsectarian faith, referenced on the nation, that served as both a source of unity for the American people and a discursive resource for political leaders and protest movements. Using recent political events as illustrative cases, I argue…
Religion as Political Resource
While empirical studies of religion's involvement in political life abound, there remains a great deal of fuzziness about the concepts that best capture it. Two often-used approaches are as and as ideology. In some perspectives culture and ideology are treated as mutually exclusive modes of religio-political phenomena; in other perspectives the two concepts are conflated. This article argues for an analytic distinction between culture and ideolog…
Stereotypes of U . S . Immigrants from Four Global Regions
Objective This study explores variation in stereotypes of U . S . immigrants from L atin A merica, the M iddle E ast, E urope, and A sia. Method We exploit a split‐ballot design in two waves of the O hio P oll to test hypotheses about effects of contextual and respondent‐level characteristics on immigrant stereotypes. Results Respondents generally rated A sian immigrants most positively and L atin A merican immigrants most negatively, with E urop…
Civil Religion in an Uncivil Society
Civil religion denotes a religion of the nation, a nonsectarian faith that has as its sacred symbols those of the polity and national history. Recent scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common canopy of values that helps foster social and cultural integration, but this perspective may now be at odds with a complex reality. Ours is an increasingly differentiated society with the rise of group politics and subcultures. The forms of ci…
Religious Rhetoric in American Populism
L'analyse de la rethorique du populisme americain de la fin du XIX e siecle revele qu'il est gorge de langage religieux, de symbolisme et de references. Loin d'etre fortuit au message populiste, le langage religieux etait une ressource constante pour l'ideologie du mouvement. Issue du discours religieux civil, la rethorique a donne au populisme un vocabulaire et l'a aide a se constituer en mouvement. Les themes religieux etaient centraux dans la …
The Languages of the Public Sphere
The increase in religious diversity in the United States since the early 1970s has led to concerns about American national identity and the health of American civil society. Part of this concern emerges from the recognized, but usually unarticulated, parallel between the organizational forms dominant in American civil society institutions and those found among Protestant religious organizations. These organizational forms have an accompanying dis…
Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization
The current 'cultural turn' in the study of social movements has produced a number of concepts formulating the cultural-symbolic dimension of collective actions. This proliferation, however, has resulted in some confusion about which cultural-symbolic concept is best applied to understanding cultural processes involved in social movements. We articulate a new definition of ideology that makes it an empirically useful concept to the study of socia…
Visions of the Good Society and the Religious Roots of American Political Culture
Journal Article Visions of the Good Society and the Religious Roots of American Political Culture Get access Rhys H. Williams Rhys H. Williams Southern Illinois University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 60, Issue 1, Spring 1999, Pages 1–34, https://doi.org/10.2307/3711806 Published: 01 March 1999
Association for the Sociology of Religion Presidential Address * Creating an American Islam
I begin with the premise that there is an American Islam being created—a version of the faith that aligns with the contemporary United States both organizationally and culturally. This faith formation is connected to the immigration of Muslims to the United States since the 1965 changes in immigration laws, even though Muslims have been in the United States, especially among African Americans, much longer than that. Two sets of social forces are …
Introduction
What to make of the Promise Keepers?In the current world of electronic 24hour news media with around-the-clock deadlines and instant analysis, the early answers have been concise, often unitary, and capable of being captured in a soundbite.Promise Keepers are a reactionary reassertion of patriarchal authority; they are a pawn of Christian Right political operatives; they are another sign of our current evangelical religious revival; they are part…
Let's Call Ourselves the Super Elite”
The mid‐twentieth century “collective behavior” school asserted that (1) collective behavior—the actions of crowds, movements, and other gatherings—had distinct dynamics; (2) such action was often “nonrational,” or not governed by cost‐benefit calculation; and (3) collective behavior could pose a threat to liberal democracy because of these features. While this tradition fell out of scholarly favor, the 2016 election has given us empirical reason…
Religion on the Edge
Introduction to a Forum on Religion and Place
Civil religious contention in Cairo, Illinois
Immigration and National Identity in Obama's America
The culture-war issues salient in US politics in the 1990s and early 2000s were typified by debates over the legality and morality of abortion and same-sex marriage. Immigration, in contrast, has been an intermittent issue, not as polarized as many others. That changed with the candidacy and then election of Barack Obama to the presidency. While anti-abortion and “pro-family” activism has continued, there is a new public focus on a vision of “Ame…
Culture
North American sociology of religion
We assess the current state of sociology of religion, particularly in the United States, for the extent to which a "critical sociology of religion" currently exists and how it might look if it did. We focus particular attention on two areas of inquiry: religion and health; and religion and violence
Cultural Wars in American Politics
Secularization in a Community Context
This paper derives from a multi-method study of religion and politics in a mid-sized northeastern city. Whereas most assessments of secularization are oriented either to the individual or to broad societal trends, this one concerns the dynamics of religion and politics at the community level. After presenting a condensed ethnography, the article explores its theoretical implications with reference to the larger literature on secularization. As ot…
Civil Religion and National Politics in a Neoliberal Era
Civil religion, or the connection of the nation‐state, its history, destiny, and people, to understandings of transcendence or divinity, is in crisis both as a theoretical concept and as a politico‐cultural phenomenon. The crisis has been brought about by the weakened capacity of the nation‐state to generate collective identity and a version of ‘charismatic’ authority. We argue that this has resulted in a shift from the widely accepted conceptual…
Collective Action, Everyday Protest, and Lived Religion
The study of social movements and the study of religious movements, per se, have had a curious history of intertwined yet distinct concerns. Within what many scholars loosely call the ‘collective behavior’ tradition, the study of religion and religious movements was a great source of conceptual and empirical material. On one side, functionalist approaches to collective behavior often proceeded from Durkheim-inspired paradigms that posited religio…
Inner City Partnerships and Established Policies
The method of understanding as applied to the problem of suffering
Inner City Partnerships and Established Policies
Character
Planning in Europe
A mythical past and uncertain future
The west European city A social geography
The geography of western Europe A socioeconomic survey
The Human Nature of Social Discontent
Civil Religion in an Uncivil Society
Civil religion denotes a religion of the nation, a nonsectarian faith that has as its sacred symbols those of the polity and national history. Recent scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common canopy of values that helps foster social and cultural integration, but this perspective may now be at odds with a complex reality. Ours is an increasingly differentiated society with the rise of group politics and subcultures. The forms of ci…
EC Environment Policy, Land use Planning and Pollution Control
In March, 1985, the Environment Council of the European Communities adopted a ‘Directive concerning the assessment of the environmental effects of certain public and private projects’ after many years of deliberation. This directive, also referred to as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Directive, represents a major step forward in implementing community environment policy, and is the first example of Community land use planning legislati…
Political Ideology and Political Action in the New Christian Right
In attempting to explain the recent prominence of politicized Evangelicalism, many researchers have used exposure to religious television as an important intervening variable between religious fundamentalism and the politicized attitudes of the New Christian Right. Using Tamney and Johnson's data (1983; 1984), we try to refine that model by distinguishing between televangelists with specifically political messages from those who emphasize a more …
Invitation to Talcott Parsons' Theory
Religion, ideology and electoral politics
Town and country planning in Britain
Religion and power in the american experience
Urban problems in Western Europe
Four metropolises in Western Europe
Readings on Church and State
Religion and Political Process in an American City
Two themes in the political culture of the United States relate the nation's politics and government to First is the sense of sacredness connected to the polity that is often termed civil religion. Second is the institutional separation of church and state, often turned into a normative separate spheres argument distancing religion from political activity. That these seemingly contradictory themes coexist is evidence for the interpretive openness…
The Rude Hand of Innovation
Secularization in a Community Context
This paper derives from a multi-method study of religion and politics in a mid-sized northeastern city. Whereas most assessments of secularization are oriented either to the individual or to broad societal trends, this one concerns the dynamics of religion and politics at the community level. After presenting a condensed ethnography, the article explores its theoretical implications with reference to the larger literature on secularization. As ot…
A Bridging of Faiths
Between "Town" and "City
Developpement de la ville de Springfield. La relation entre la religion et la politique au niveau municipal montre que ni la politique, ni l'economie seules, sont suffisantes pour expliquer le developpement de la ville, mais que des facteurs culturels i.e. la religion et l'ethnologie ont largement participe a son histoire
A Bridging of Faiths
A Bridging of Faiths
Sociology (79 works) · Political science (68 works) · Law (52 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (42 works) · Politics (39 works) · Philosophy (36 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (30 works) · Law (23 works) · Religious studies (22 works) · Gender Studies (19 works)