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

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