Status Inconsistency and Moral Issues
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2514545 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John H Simpson (0009-0008-0637-9978, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1985 |
| Volume | 24 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 155 |
| Publication date | 1985-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8294 • E-ISSN: 1468-5906 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1386339 |
| OpenAlex | W2320160187 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 12 |
| References cited | 4 |
The emergence of the New Christian Right (NCR) as a force in the contemporary American political arena has raised once again the question of how to explain the origin of moral reform movements, and the role that religion plays in underwriting and sustaining them. The dean of American political sociologists, Seymour Martin Lipset, in keeping with his established views on right-wing politics, has argued that the Moral Majority phenomenon is a manifestation attributable to the threat that modernity poses for the values and folkways of sectarian Protestants. Attendant resentments, the theory goes, are transmuted into a politics of moral outrage (Lipset & Raab, 1981; see also Gannon, 1981, and Shupe & Stacey, 1982; cf. Harper & Leicht, 1984). As Wood and Hughes (1984) point out, Lipset's perspective traces the urge for moral reform to the status discontent accruing to groups that are in transit from the center to the periphery of a society. That view, however, is not unrelated to status inconsistency arguments which predict various individual reactive behaviors (including political activism) from status discrepancy. Using data from seven General Social Surveys, Wood and Hughes (1984) find evidence to sustain a status inconsistency interpretation of attitudes in the general population toward the distribution of pornography. They conclude that no special theories concerned with status frustration or status deprivation are required to account for the social base of moral-reform movements (96).1 Regarding the general reform movement exemplified by the Moral Majority phenomenon, it has been argued that by 1980 the Fundamentalists spearheading the movement were not experiencing a rapid loss of respect, prestige, or deference to their ways. On the contrary, they comprise a culturally disvalued group that was pushed to the edge of the American public arena over fifty years ago and is now taking advantage of fissures in the liberal establishment to regain some of the ground lost in the twenties and thirties. Thus, a sense of cultural and political empowerment and not resentment
Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Social Psychology
Education, Religiosity and Moral Attitudes
Socio-Moral Issues and Recent Presidential Elections
Picketing Satan Enfleshed at 7-Eleven
The impact of social status inconsistency on cardiovascular risk factors, myocardial infarction and stroke in the Epic-Heidelberg cohort
Explaining support for the Moral Majority
Classifying Protestant Denominations
Religion and Attitudes on Moral Issues
The Liberalism of American Jews – Has It Been Explained
The Career of Status Crystallization
Small Business, Status Politics, and the Social Base of New Christian Right Activism
Multiple Dimensions of the Moral Majority Platform
Pornography and moral attitudes
| Unique citing works | 12 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,29 |
| Citation span | 1985 - 2011 (27) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |