Rebecca Catto

Bio: Rebecca Catto is an academic researcher from Kent State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Human rights & Identity (social science). The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 26 publications receiving 386 citations. Previous affiliations of Rebecca Catto include University of Exeter & Lancaster University.

Religion and Change in Modern Britain

Abstract: This book offers a fully up-to-date and comprehensive guide to religion in Britain since 1945. A team of leading scholars provide a fresh analysis and overview, with a particular focus on diversity and change.

(Dis)Believing and Belonging: Investigating the Narratives of Young British Atheists

Abstract: The development and public prominence of the ‘New Atheism’ in the West, particularly the UK and USA, since the millennium has occasioned considerable growth in the study of ‘non-religion and secularity’. Such work is uncovering the variety and complexity of associated categories, different public figures, arguments and organizations involved. There has been a concomitant increase in research on youth and religion. As yet, however, little is known about young people who self-identify as atheist, though the statistics indicate that in Britain they are the cohort most likely to select ‘No religion’ in surveys. This article addresses this gap with presentation of data gathered with young British people who describe themselves as atheists. Atheism is a multifaceted identity for these young people developed over time and through experience. Disbelief in God and other non-empirical propositions such as in an afterlife and the efficacy of homeopathy and belief in progress through science, equality and freedom are central to their narratives. Hence belief is taken as central to the sociological study of atheism, but understood as formed and performed in relationships in which emotions play a key role. In the late modern context of contemporary Britain, these young people are far from amoral individualists. We employ current theorizing about the sacred to help understand respondents’ belief and value-oriented non-religious identities in context.

‘That’s how Muslims are required to view the world’: Race, culture and belief in non-Muslims’ descriptions of Islam and science:

Abstract: Islam’s positioning in relation to Western ideals of individuality, freedom, women’s rights and democracy has been an abiding theme of sociological analysis and cultural criticism, especially since...

A supply-side reinterpretation of the secularization' of Europe

Abstract: We propose a theory of religious mobilization that accounts for variations in religious participation on the basis of variations in the degree of regulation of religious economies and consequent variations in their levels of religious competition. To account for the apparent 'secularization" of many European nations, we stress supply-side weaknesses - inefficient religious organizations within highly regulated religious economies - rather than a lack of individual religious demand. We test the theory with both quantitative and historical data and, based on the results, suggest that the concept of secularization be dropped for lack of cases to which it could apply.