“Spiritual Sluts”: Uncovering Gender, Ethnicity, and Sexuality in the Post-Secular

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Notes

¹Ethnicity, as I use it here, is an identity term referring to one's cultural heritage. In the U.S., use of this term is distinct from the term “race,” which, though sometimes denominated by skin color, refers generally to the continental origin of one's ancestors. In their references to culture, however, the two terms sometimes overlap in common usage.

²See Bruce 2002; Wilson 1998; this debate is nicely summarized in Berger, Davie, and Fokas 2008: 31–36.

³See Finke and Stark 1992; Iannaccone 1996 and the subsequent exchange between Iannaccone and several other American sociologists of religion.

⁴Early proponents of a more nuanced perspective on religion and modernity were Casanova 1994 and Davie 1994.

⁵See Gorski and Altinordu 2008. This perspective is also suggested by O'Brian Baker and Smith 2009. It comes originally from a talk given by Jürgen Habermas in 2001.

⁶See Davie 1994.

⁷ Storm 2009; Bellah 1985. “Sheila Larson” (a pseudonym) was a participant in the study conducted by Bellah and his colleagues who practiced a very loosely-defined, individualistic religion. She could not remember the last time she had gone to church, and focused her beliefs on love. She termed her religion “Sheilaism.”

⁸For an early overview of such research, see: Walter and Davie 1998.

⁹See McGuire 2008.

¹⁰For example Woodhead 2008; Sointu and Woodhead 2008; Heelas and Woodhead 2005.

¹¹See Wilcox 2003.

¹²For more detail on this study, see Wilcox 2009.

¹³Adesina, interview with the author, October 2, 2001.

¹⁴See Walter and Davie 1998 Woodhead 2008.

¹⁵Ronni Sanlo, interview with the author, August 30, 2001.

¹⁶Danielle, interview with the author, September 12, 2001.

¹⁷See Roof 1993: 55; Roof 1999: 122; Smith et al. 2002; Wallace et al. 2003.

¹⁸See Savin-Williams 1990: 156–159; Savin-Williams and Diamond 2000; Floyd and Bakeman 2006.

¹⁹Recent examples include Halbertal and Koren 2006; Schnoor 2006; Yip 2002; Yip 2004; Yip 2005; Wilcox 2003.

²⁰Pellegrini draws her inspiration for this argument from Garber 1992.

²¹Sister Titania Humperpickle, personal communication, 26 July 2010.

²²There are also interesting ethnic and racial dynamics among the Sisters, though space restrictions prevent me from exploring them thoroughly here. First, the majority of the Sisters are of European descent and serve mostly those of European descent. Second, the Sisters wear white face makeup like that worn by clowns or mimes; in the context of the racist history of “blackface” makeup in the U.S. (in which white people blackened their faces with coal and caricatured black people), the use of whiteface deserves to be interrogated.

²³ Roof 1999; see also Bellah et al. 1985.

²⁴ Browne, Munt, and Yip 2009; see especially the conclusion.