Racial tension divides American society. Racial equality remains a distant goal. Although the potion of Black Americans has improved in recent years, the widespread enthusiasm for the Civil Rights movement has waned. Why has progress slowed? What makes racial problems in America so difficult to solve? A principal cause, according to The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes, is the way in which white Americans explain, or account for, the social conditions in which most black Americans find themselves. A substantial proportion of whites believe that stereotypes that Black Americans are relatively less well off because blacks do not try hard enough to better themselves or because of the difference due to genertics or to God's plan. Whites who hold such views have relatively little sympathy for programs designed to improve the social conditions. In contrast, whites who believe that Black Americans are kept back either by deliberate discrimination or by the accumulated social results of past discrimination are much more receptive to policies designed to help blacks. Using qualitative and quantitive data, this book explores the variety and extent of these explanations for social differences; it also describes how each explanation--or combination of explanations--influences a person's views on policies designed to bring about greater racial equality. This study promises to influence not only the course of future academic research on race relations but also the formulation of public policy to deal with racial problems. It reveals that the resistance of many whites to policies favorable to racial equality are not isolated phenomenon but instead is part of a comprehensive view of how society works. If strides toward racial equality are to be made in the foreseeable future, the insights provided here must be considered seriously by policy makers and be incorporated into their strategies. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

Since the mid-1960s, new religious movements-some exotic, some homegrown-have burgeoned all over the United States. A sense of self-awareness and spiritual sensitivity have found expression in the lives of large numbers of people, especially among youth. Why would this happen? What do these movements teach, and what effect do they have on the future? How does religious consciousness relate to other manifestations of social change, such as communal living, group therapy, and radical politics? Beginning in 1971, an extensive research project was undertaken by a team of sociologists, historians, and theologians seeking answers to these questions. Through a combination of interviews and participant observations, they studied new religious and quasi-religious groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, a spawning ground for upwards of one hundred such movements. The New Religious Consciousness opens with reports on three Eastern-based movements: the Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization, Hare Krishna, and Divine Light (more popularly known by the name of its leader, Maharaj Ji). Three quasi-religious movements are then considered: the New Left, the Human Potential Movement (Esalen, EST, Scientology, etc.), and Synanon. Next, three movements having their roots in Western religious traditions are examined: the Christian World Liberation Front (an offshoot of the Jesus Movement), Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and the Church of Satan (whose members believe in witchcraft). Succeeding chapters are devoted to estimating the impact of these movements on established religions and the population at large and to the history of earlier periods of religious ferment in the United States. The book concludes with provocative essays by the editors in which they present separate and differing analyses of the sources, nature, and meaning of the new religious consciousness. A variety of perspectives are represented here: phenomenological, theological, experiential, sociological, and social psychological. The result is a book rich in insight about the nature of new religions. Taken together with a companion volume, Robert Wuthnow's The Consciousness Reformation, also published by University of California Press, The New Religious Consciousness provides the first comprehensive study of American countercultural belief systems. With contributions by: Randall H. Alfred Robert N. Bellah Charles Y. Glock Barbara Hargrove Donald Heinz Gregory Johnson Ralph Lane, Jr. Jeanne Messer Richard Ofshe Thomas Piazza Linda K. Pritchard Donald Stone Alan Tobey James Wolfe Robert Wuthnow This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

Racial tension divides American society. Racial equality remains a distant goal. Although the potion of Black Americans has improved in recent years, the widespread enthusiasm for the Civil Rights movement has waned. Why has progress slowed? What makes racial problems in America so difficult to solve? A principal cause, according to The Anatomy of Racial Attitudes, is the way in which white Americans explain, or account for, the social conditions in which most black Americans find themselves. A substantial proportion of whites believe that stereotypes that Black Americans are relatively less well off because blacks do not try hard enough to better themselves or because of the difference due to genertics or to God's plan. Whites who hold such views have relatively little sympathy for programs designed to improve the social conditions. In contrast, whites who believe that Black Americans are kept back either by deliberate discrimination or by the accumulated social results of past discrimination are much more receptive to policies designed to help blacks. Using qualitative and quantitive data, this book explores the variety and extent of these explanations for social differences; it also describes how each explanation--or combination of explanations--influences a person's views on policies designed to bring about greater racial equality. This study promises to influence not only the course of future academic research on race relations but also the formulation of public policy to deal with racial problems. It reveals that the resistance of many whites to policies favorable to racial equality are not isolated phenomenon but instead is part of a comprehensive view of how society works. If strides toward racial equality are to be made in the foreseeable future, the insights provided here must be considered seriously by policy makers and be incorporated into their strategies. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983.

How religious are Americans these days? How many still believe in God, in Biblical miracles, in heaven and hell? Do people pray? How much money is being given to churches, by Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and other groups? American Piety, the first of a three-volume study of religious commitment, answers these and a host of other questions about the contemporary religious scene. Particularly startling are the contrasts in beliefs, practices, and experiences revealed among the eleven major Christian denominations whose membership is compared.