Religion and socio-economic human rights : an empirical enquiry among adolescents in England and Wales

This study explores the association between attitudes toward socio-economic human rights and three dimensions of religion (religious practice, religiosity, and self-assigned religious affiliation), after taking into account personal factors (age and sex) and psychological factors (extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism) among a sample of 987 students between the ages of 14 and 18 years in England and Wales. Religious practice was assessed by two factors, personal prayer and worship attendance. Religiosity was assessed by three factors, thinking about religious issues, reconsidering religious issues, and belief in God. Self-assigned religious affiliation distinguished among four groups, Protestant Christians, Catholic Christians, Muslims, and religiously unaffiliated. The data demonstrated the importance of personal factors, with females and older students holding more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights, and the importance of psychological factors, with higher neuroticism scores and lower psychoticism scores being associated with more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights. Among the dimension of religion, religiosity provided stronger prediction of individual differences in attitudes toward socio-economic human rights than either religious practice or self-assigned religious affiliation. In particular, adolescents who often gave thought to religious issues held more positive attitudes toward socio-economic human rights

Religious freedom in context: A comparison between Belarus and Romania

This chapter is an attempt to contribute the comparative study of religious freedom and Eastern Orthodoxy in sociological perspective. By examining the socio-legal similarities and differences in religious freedom governance in Orthodox Belarus and Romania and patterns of religious freedom views among adolescents (16\u201319 years old) in Belarus (N = 651) and Romania (N = 589), the authors argue that the official religious freedom policies had resemblance with religious freedom views of a young generation. The current empirical study showed a greater level of skepticism towards religious freedom entitlements expressed by young people in Belarus, compared to Romania. For both countries, this study indicated differences between non-religious, religious majority, and religious minorities groups in regard to \u2018religious freedom entitlements,\u2019 but not in regard to \u2018religious freedom governance.\u2019 Considering the similarities in religious freedom views regarding the predictive power of individual religiosity together with the traditional role of religion linking national and spiritual elements and the absence of predictive effect by religious pluralism, we problematize the concept of religious freedom for the further analysis of Orthodoxy worldwide. Based on empirical evidence, we discuss how sociology of religious freedom advances the study of Orthodox tradition and modernization nexus and better understanding of relationship between individual beliefs and institutional conditions that affect religious freedom advancement in Eastern European Orthodox countries