Category
Applied
Description
While sociological research has extensively documented the decline of religious affiliation (the "rise of the Nones"), fewer studies examine the erosion of theological anthropology, the fundamental beliefs about the nature of the self among religious adherents who remain active within faith communities. Drawing on twenty years of qualitative participant observation in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, this study investigates how affluent Christians maintain or fail to maintain a "Bipartite" (Soul-Body) worldview while embedded in highly secularized, technocratic professional environments. Utilizing a reflexive ethnographic design and NVivo-supported thematic analysis, the research identifies a phenomenon of "Ontological Dissonance," where adherents profess orthodox Christian creeds but enact secular anthropologies specifically "Biological Monism," "Therapeutic Individualism," and "Functional Gnosticism” in their daily professional and domestic lives. The findings suggest that high-status workplaces in the defense, legal, and tech sectors function as "Total Institutions," utilizing "Machine Logic" and security clearances as surrogate plausibility structures that destabilize religious identity. This study argues that the Northern Virginia "Habitus" creates a unique "Clearance Identity" that functions as a surrogate soul, where the state's metric of "trustworthiness" replaces the theological category of "righteousness." The study offers religious leaders a diagnostic framework for understanding "internal secularization" and proposes specific "Counter-Liturgies" designed to restore a sense of transcendent agency to congregants operating in "Iron Cage" environments. Keywords: Lived Religion, Religious Identity, Plausibility Structures, Secularization, Pastoral Sociology, Theological Anthropology, Reflexive Ethnography, Charles Taylor, Max Weber, Hartmut Rosa.
The Erosion of the Imago Dei: A Qualitative Study of Religious Identity Maintenance Among Affluent Professionals in Secularized Environments
Applied
While sociological research has extensively documented the decline of religious affiliation (the "rise of the Nones"), fewer studies examine the erosion of theological anthropology, the fundamental beliefs about the nature of the self among religious adherents who remain active within faith communities. Drawing on twenty years of qualitative participant observation in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, this study investigates how affluent Christians maintain or fail to maintain a "Bipartite" (Soul-Body) worldview while embedded in highly secularized, technocratic professional environments. Utilizing a reflexive ethnographic design and NVivo-supported thematic analysis, the research identifies a phenomenon of "Ontological Dissonance," where adherents profess orthodox Christian creeds but enact secular anthropologies specifically "Biological Monism," "Therapeutic Individualism," and "Functional Gnosticism” in their daily professional and domestic lives. The findings suggest that high-status workplaces in the defense, legal, and tech sectors function as "Total Institutions," utilizing "Machine Logic" and security clearances as surrogate plausibility structures that destabilize religious identity. This study argues that the Northern Virginia "Habitus" creates a unique "Clearance Identity" that functions as a surrogate soul, where the state's metric of "trustworthiness" replaces the theological category of "righteousness." The study offers religious leaders a diagnostic framework for understanding "internal secularization" and proposes specific "Counter-Liturgies" designed to restore a sense of transcendent agency to congregants operating in "Iron Cage" environments. Keywords: Lived Religion, Religious Identity, Plausibility Structures, Secularization, Pastoral Sociology, Theological Anthropology, Reflexive Ethnography, Charles Taylor, Max Weber, Hartmut Rosa.
