Sex and SecularismShayne2 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2009
Previous literature on religion and sexual behavior has focused on narrow definitions of religiosity, including religious affiliation, religious participation, or forms of religiousness (e.g., intrinsic religiosity). Trends toward more permissive premarital sexual activity in the North American Christian-Judeo religion support the secularization hypothesis of religion, which posits an increasing gap between religious doctrine and behavior. However, the recent rise of fundamentalist and new age religious movements calls for a reexamination of the current link between religion and sexual behavior. The use of dual definitions of religiosity, including religious affiliation and dimensional subtypes, may further characterize this link. The present cross-sectional study evaluated patterns of sexual behavior in a young adult sample (N = 1302, M age = 18.77 years) in the context of the secularization hypothesis using religious affiliation and a liberal-conservative continuum of religious subtypes: paranormal belief, spirituality, intrinsic religiosity, and fundamentalism. Results indicated few affiliation differences in sexual behavior in men or women. Sexual behaviors were statistically predicted by spirituality, fundamentalism, and paranormal belief, and the endorsement of fundamentalism in particular was correlated with lower levels of female sexual behavior. The secularization hypothesis was supported by consistent levels of sexual activity across affiliations and is contradicted by the differential impact of religiosity subtypes on sexual behavior. Findings suggested that the use of religious subtypes to evaluate religious differences, rather than solely affiliation, may yield useful insights into the link between religion and sexual behavior.
Religiousness and sexual behaviors in young
Brazilian Journal of Health Review
Objective: Adolescents’ behaviors are generally influenced by socio-cultural context, including religion. To evaluate the association between religion and sexual behavior in a group of young. Methods: Questionnaire applied in 2010 to Portuguese young to evaluate sexual behaviors, comparing 4 study groups: religious; non-religious; religious and practicing; religious and non-practicing. Results: We included 2341 questionnaires, with mean age 18.5±2.35 years, and 78% were religious-young. There was no difference between genders concerning first sexual intercourse mean age (16.4±1.91 vs. 16.4±1.65 years-old, p=0.827, in male and female sex, respectively) nor number of sexual partners. Females report having forced sexual intercourse more frequently than male sex (4.3% vs. 2.2%, p=0.009). Non-religious group have more sexual transmitted infections compared to religious young (3.6% vs 2.0%, p=0.039) but there were no differences between studied groups about having sexual intercourse with...
Hiding the Word: Examining the Relationship Between a New Measure of Religiosity and Sexual Behavior
Journal of Religion & Health, 2013
The relationship between religiosity and sexual behavior has been previously investigated, but researchers have not examined the relationship between the intellectual dimension of religiosity and sexual behavior. In this study, we developed an intellectual measure of religiosity, Hiding the Word (HTW), and examined whether it accounted for variation in the sexual behavior of college students, beyond that for which age and a generic measure of religiosity could account. Results showed, after accounting for age and generic religiosity, HTW made a significant contribution to distinguishing between students who had, and those who had not, engaged in various sexual behaviors. For females, this was the case in three of the five behaviors examined (all except receiving oral sex and participating in unprotected penile-vaginal intercourse at most recent sexual encounter), and for males, two of the four behaviors (sexual intercourse and anal intercourse). HTW was less of a factor in accounting for variation in the frequency of participation. For males, HTW was significant for the frequency of participation in penile-vaginal intercourse, Our beloved friend and colleague, George Denny, played a major role in this project, in our lives, and in the lives of countless students. George died on June 13, 2013. He will be greatly missed.
Sanctification or inhibition? Religious dualities and sexual satisfaction
Journal of Family Psychology, 2020
Religiosity can influence sexual satisfaction both positively and negatively. To test positive and negative mechanisms, we assessed how religiosity is indirectly associated with sexual satisfaction through sexual sanctification and inhibited sexual passion. We sampled individuals from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N ϭ 1,695, Study 1) and mixed-sex dyads from Bovitz Inc. (N ϭ 481 dyads, Study 2). Religiosity consistently had a positive indirect association with sexual satisfaction through sexual sanctification; little evidence suggested religiosity had an indirect association with sexual satisfaction through inhibited sexual passion. When accounting for these mechanisms simultaneously, however, religiosity consistently had a negative direct association with sexual satisfaction, supporting the possibility of religious dualities. In the couple study, men's religiosity predicted their partner reporting higher sexual sanctification (for married couples), but women's religiosity did not predict partner sexual sanctification. Altogether, these results paint a complex picture for how religiosity might influence sexuality. Understanding the nuance of these results may help people maximize the potential benefits of their belief systems in sexual relationships.
Religion, Religiosity, and Nonmarital Sexual Conduct: An Application of Reference Group Theory
The research reported within examines two hypotheses derived from reference group theory regarding the inverse effects of religiosity on the prevalence of premarital, extramarital , and homosexual relations across faith groups. The first hypothesis asserts that the strength of these inverse religiosity effects varies systematically across faith groups, such that as religious proscriptiveness increases, the effect of religiosity increases. The second hypothesis predicts that there will also be systematic variation in these effects across these forms of nonmarital sexual relations such that faith group variation in the effects of personal religiosity will be most evident with regard to premarital sexual relations but relatively invariant with regard to extramarital and homosexual relations. Using logistic regression analyses with data available in the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) 1988–1996 General Social Surveys, we find a mixed pattern of results which provides limited support for these hypotheses. Cochran and Beeghley (1991, pp. 45–6) argue that the five decades of social scientific research on the relationship(s) between religion and sexuality can be organized into " three steadily progressive periods " to which they recommend adding a new, fourth period of research. These are: (1) an early period in which the empirical research was largely descriptive in nature, atheoretical, and employed a rather low level of analytic sophistication; (2) a middle period characterized by improved, yet nascent, theoretical efforts and slightly more advanced statistical analyses (i.e., bivariate correlations); (3) the more recent theory-driven period in which the research designs have emphasized the use of least-squares regression techniques but restricted themselves to simple linear models; and (4) the current period in which the model specification errors of the previous period are being corrected through the utilization of advanced statistical modeling techniques that permit testing of theoretically appropriate, nonlinear functional forms. They conclude that the collective body of research throughout these four periods, which they claim to be based on more than 80 studies, has consistently revealed inverse relationships between religion/religios-ity and nonmarital sexuality (attitudinal and/or behavioral). Despite longstanding Judeo-Christian doctrines of asceticism and traditions restricting sexual activity to married heterosexual couples (DeLamater 1981), Cochran and Beeghley caution against any conclusions that these relationships are simply " the empirical validation of common knowledge " or the " discovery
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Prior research on the relationship between religion and/or religiosity and nonmarital sexuality (i.e., premarital, extramarital, and homosexual relations) has found an inverse relationship with enough consistency to qualify as an empirical generalization. However, while parsimonious, such a generalization is overly simplistic. Moreover, the research findings on which this generalization is based were biased by specification errors due to the employment of a theoretically inappropriate functional form. In this paper, we propose models, derived from reference group theory, which stress an interactive influence of both religion and religiosity on sexual attitudes, rather than the simple bivariate linear effects common in earlier studies. These models were assessed with data from the NORC General Social Surveys. Our findings, obtained from logistic regression analyses, support our theoretical models: The effects of religiosity on nonmarital sexuality vary predictably by religious affiliation.
Understanding Religious Variations in Sexuality and Sexual Health
In this chapter, we provide an overview and critical examination of published research concerning the impact of religious involvement on the outcomes of sexuality and sexual health across the life course. We take a broad approach, focusing on a variety of important topics, including sexual behavior, sexual health education, abortion attitudes and behavior, HIV/AIDS, attitudes toward gays and lesbians, and the lived experiences of sexual minorities. In the future, researchers should (1) employ more comprehensive measures of religious involvement, (2) investigate understudied outcomes related to sexuality and sexual health, (3) explore mechanisms linking religion, sexuality, and sexual health, (4) establish subgroup variations in the impact of religious involvement, and (5) formally test alternative explanations like personality selection and social desirability. Research along these lines would certainly contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of religious variations in sexuality and sexual health across the life course.
Assessment of the Relationship between Religiosity and Sexual Behavior
2019
This book is derived from a research study entitled “Assessment of the Relationship between Religiosity and Sexual Behaviour among Unmarried Adolescents in selected Schools in Lusaka Zambia”. It has been written to support policy makers, scholars and programme implementers in mitigation of HIV transmission. The purpose is to create awareness on facts that will contribute to a body of knowledge to be used to develop strategies in HIV prevention in health systems. One of the societal relevance is to contribute towards the search of responses to questions that are often asked by the society at large in pursuit to solve HIV problems. Understanding measures of preventing HIV transmission will entail devising strategies intended to reduce incidences of HIV infection. This will benefit a number of stakeholders such as students, lecturers, policy makers, communities and the nation as a whole to foster positive decision making on adolescents in order to maintain healthy standards and become ...
Journal of Sex Research, 2011
This study assesses the role of religion in influencing sexual frequency and satisfaction among older married adults and sexual activity among older unmarried adults. We propose and test several hypotheses about the relationship between religion and sex among these two groups of older Americans, using nationally representative data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP). Results suggest that among married older adults, religion is largely unrelated with sexual frequency and satisfaction, although religious integration in daily life shares a weak but positive association with pleasure from sex. For unmarried adults, such religious integration exhibits a negative association with having had sex in the last year among women but not men.