Religiosity

Religiosity refers to the strength and scope of religious activity among faith-based communities. Although “religion” and “religiosity” are often used synonymously, there is a considerable difference between these two terms. Whereas religion sociologically denotes beliefs and practices in relation to the sacred, religiosity encompasses a variety of representations that symbolize religious involvement. Within the religions of the Abrahamic traditions, for example, there exist monotheistic belief systems involving a multitude of practices that adhere to the teachings of literary texts. However, the religiosity of these traditions would be found within any number of activities including patterns of religious involvement, forms of religious expression, manifestations of religious structures, and the like. This entry discusses some historical and contemporary political implications of the different manifestations of religiosity.

In the international political climate of the 21st century, for example, religiosity has become a crucial feature in discourses concerning global security. In a controversial assessment of religiosity's role in global politics, Samuel P. Huntington's (1996) book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order attributed the potential for post–Cold War conflict to religious and cultural clashes between nations and differing civilizations. Despite Huntington's classification of some eight civilizations based on cultural lines, these civilizations are largely bound by the demarcations of religiosity. Given this type of reasoning and categorization, religiosity represents a critical position in transnational conflicts.

Notwithstanding some other factors, the conflicts of the early 21st century generated by religious groups suggest that Huntington's thesis is supported by a considerable amount of evidence. Demonstrated through the violent incidents of September 11, 2001, the 19 hijackers can be said to have been defending their religiosity through a type of aggression that they felt would stem the spread of Western values and ideologies. Western encroachment in this way on what Huntington called “Islamic civilization” may, perhaps, engender the greatest amount of conflict.

When one's religiosity becomes systematically threatened, contentions appear to be elevated to another level. Mark Juergensmeyer, in his 2000 book Terror in the Mind of God, coined the term cosmic war to describe a situation where battles between perceptions of good and evil emerge. In this case, a person's or group's religiosity becomes the basis for at least one side of such a cosmic conflict. For example, the indifference that the West often displays toward the contradictory interplay between modern customs and traditional sacred beliefs and practices creates an atmosphere where religious expression marks a quasi-ideological status. In this way, dealing with religiosity in a culturally insensitive manner is detrimental to the resolution of conflicts of this magnitude.

Given the importance of religiosity in global affairs, measuring its attributes is particularly useful. Religiosity is often measured in terms of practices that indicate the religiousness of a population, including prayers, worship, service attendance, adherence to established principles of faith, commitment to belief, and any number of other activities that suggest an interaction with religious institutions. Basic examples of the results of such measurements may yield quantitative data such as correlations between the frequency of church attendance and physical well-being or qualitative data that suggest, for example, that the social mobility and economic success of an individual is linked to his or her commitment to a particular set of religious beliefs. One of the most well-known examples of studies pertaining to religiosity is Max Weber's ([1904/1905] 1998) book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber focused on an insightful finding about the relationship between religiosity among the Calvinist branch of Protestantism and the emergence of modern capitalism. As Weber noted, the religious doctrine of predestination led to an ethic of hard work combined with an innerworldly asceticism that indirectly resulted in an early accumulation of capital.

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