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An Epidemic among My People: Foreword

An Epidemic among My People
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table of contents
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Foreword
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Introduction
  9. Part I: Religious Groups Confront the Pandemic
    1. 1. Satan and a Virus Won’t Stop Us: The Prosperity Gospel of Coronavirus Response
    2. 2. Are Religious Adherents More Likely to Buy Into COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories?
    3. 3. Religion and Gun Purchasing amid a Pandemic, Civil Unrest, and an Election
    4. 4. Christian Nationalism and the COVID-19 Pandemic
    5. 5. Syndemics during a Pandemic: Racial Inequity, Poverty, and COVID-19
    6. 6. Is the Effect of Religion “Raced” on Pandemic Attitudes and Behaviors?
  10. Part II: Elite Actions and Messaging
    1. 7. Precedent, Performance, and Polarization: The Christian Legal Movement and Religious Freedom Politics during the Coronavirus Pandemic
    2. 8. A Tale of Two Burdens: COVID-19 and the Question of Religious Free Exercise
    3. 9. High Stakes: Christian Right Politics in 2020
    4. 10. Faith, Source Credibility, and Trust in Pandemic Information
  11. Part III: Pandemic Effects on Religious Groups and Individuals
    1. 11. Women as Religious Leaders: The Gendered Politics of Shutting Down
    2. 12. Racialized Responses to COVID-19
    3. 13. In God “Z” Trusts? Generation Z’s Attitudes about Religion and COVID-19
    4. 14. Who’s Allowed in Your Lifeboat? How Religious Identity Altered Life-Saving Priorities in Response to COVID-19
    5. 15. How the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Religious Practices in the United States
    6. 16. Patterns of In-Person Worship Service Attendance during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Importance of Political and Religious Context
  12. Conclusion
  13. Notes
  14. References
  15. Contributors
  16. Index

Foreword

ROBERT P. JONES

This unique volume brings together a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars to reflect on the religious, cultural, and political landscape at an inflection point in our nation’s history. As the editors point out, the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has served as a rare, universally felt stimulus for Americans of all walks of life. At the time of this writing, the virus has claimed over 833,000 American lives—a number far higher than the estimated 675,000 from last century’s 1918–1919 influenza pandemic and exceeding the 651,000 combined American battle deaths from every war conducted from the American Revolution to Desert Storm in 1991.1

Prior to the pandemic, the American religious landscape has experienced high levels of change and churn. Religious adherence has been on the decline, with approximately one-quarter of Americans—and about four in ten adults under the age of thirty—now claiming no religious affiliation, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s (PRRI’s) 2020 Census of American Religion. Political partisanship has polarized denominations and churches, sorting the religious landscape along ethnoreligious lines; white Christian groups generally lean Republican, while nonwhite Christians, non-Christian religious groups, and the religiously unaffiliated each consistently leans Democrat.2 In addition to the highly divisive 2020 presidential election accentuating these fault lines, the summer of 2020 also saw some of the largest and most widespread protests for racial justice in American history. Like an X-ray, the COVID-19 pandemic sent a current into this highly volatile cocktail, fluorescing to reveal the inner workings of religion and culture in America.

This volume is unprecedented in its breadth, gathering into a single volume the analysis and insights of more than thirty social scientists with expertise in political science, sociology, religious studies, public health, journalism and communications, psychology, and women’s studies. Written in real time during the pandemic and grounded in public opinion survey data from early and late 2020, this volume promises to be the benchmark against which future analyses of religion, culture, and politics in this critical time in our nation’s history are measured.

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