Sociology
The Emotional Management of Progressive Religious Mobilization
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Faith-based community organizations (FBCOs) have been among the most successful U.S. civic groups in forging solidarity and collective action across social difference. Building on scholarship that emphasizes how culture can ease race and class tensions within organizations, I analyze the emotional management of structural difference in FBCOs' organizing projects. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews within a large, diverse FBCO, I identify two emotional narratives that motivate individuals' participation - lived injustice and failed covenant. I document the streamlining of these narratives through a practice I call vulnerability talk, and show that this process can enhance group cohesion at some times, but undermine it at others. By conceptualizing faith-based organizing as the emotional management of structural difference, this article provides a clearer understanding of how culture works in religious mobilization than accounts focused on interests alone, and points to emotions as a central concern in today's progressive movements, both religious and secular.
Publication Title
Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review
Publication Date
5-19-2018
Volume
79
Issue
2
First Page
248
Last Page
272
ISSN
1069-4404
DOI
10.1093/socrel/sry016
Keywords
culture, politics, social movements/collective behavior
Repository Citation
Delehanty, Jack, "The Emotional Management of Progressive Religious Mobilization" (2018). Sociology. 29.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_sociology/29