Research has demonstrated that white conservative Protestants are more opposed to abortion than their Catholic counterparts. At the same time, conservative Protestantism has made significant inroads among U.S. Latinos. This study augments existing research on religion and racial‐ethnic variations in abortion attitudes by comparing levels of support for legalized abortion among Catholic and conservative Protestant Latinos. Data are drawn from a nationally representative sample of U.S. Latinos. Significantly greater opposition to abortion is found among religiously devout conservative Protestant Latinos when compared with their Catholic counterparts. Latino Catholicism, which functions as a near‐monopolistic, highly institutionalized faith tradition among Hispanics, produces weaker antiabortion attitudes than those exhibited in Latino conservative Protestantism. Among Latinos, conservative Protestantism operates as a niche voluntaristic faith. These factors produce a religious schema that yields robust antiabortion attitudes. This study has important implications for understanding the intersection of race‐ethnicity, religion, and public policy preferences.

Objectives. This study examines links between multiple aspects of religious involvement and attitudes toward same-sex marriage among U.S. Latinos. The primary focus is on variations by affiliation and participation, but the possible mediating roles of biblical beliefs, clergy cues, and the role of religion in shaping political views are also considered.Methods. We use binary logistic regression models to analyze data from a large nationwide sample of U.S. Latinos conducted by the Pew Hispanic Forum in late 2006.Results. Findings highlight the strong opposition to same-sex marriage among Latino evangelical (or conservative) Protestants and members of sectarian groups (e.g., LDS), even compared with devout Catholics. Although each of the hypothesized mediators is significantly linked with attitudes toward same-sex marriage, for the most part controlling for them does not alter the massive affiliation/attendance differences in attitudes toward same-sex marriage.Conclusions. This study illustrates the importance of religious cleavages in public opinion on social issues within the diverse U.S. Latino population. The significance of religious variations in Hispanic civic life is likely to increase with the growth of the Latino population and the rising numbers of Protestants and sectarians among Latinos.

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Using a random sample of adult residents from the state of Texas, we examine how religious participation and secular civic engagement buffer the effects of perceived financial strain and neighborhood disadvantage on psychological distress. Our findings suggest that (a) both organizational religious and secular civic engagement buffer the deleterious effects of perceived financial hardship on respondents’ psychological distress, (b) organizational as well as nonorganizational religious participation buffers the detrimental effects of perceived neighborhood disadvantage on respondents’ psychological distress, (c) religious involvement has a more robust buffering effect than secular civic engagement, and (d) nonorganizational religious participation can serve as a coping mechanism for respondents who suffer from psychological distress. Research implications, study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

Durkheim's underdeveloped notion of fatalism is the keystone for a bridge between two conceptual categories central to Marxian and Durkheimian theory: alienation and anomie. Durkheim does not necessarily disagree with Marx that excessive regulation can be socially damaging but chooses to highlight the effects of underregulation. A Durkheimian critique of overregulation becomes possible if we turn away from anomie and toward Durkheim's idea of fatalism-a concept that I will argue here is unexpectedly consistent with Marx's notion of alienation. We can infer that Durkheim presents us with a notion of an ''optimal'' human condition that exists between anomie and fatalism. The structure of modern societies, it will be argued, is characterized not just by excessive control leading to alienation or by a lack of integrative restraint leading to anomie but also by active efforts to optimally regulate social life.Durkheim sides with Hobbes and Freud where Marx sides with Rousseau and the Utopians.Lukes (1967) If men were angels, no government would be necessary.James Madison (The Federalist Papers No. 51)The classic theorists, each in their distinctive way, articulate contrasting, competing, and at times complementary theories of social order and human essence. In their collective intellectual achievements, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber offered not only profound criticisms of industrialization and the rise of capitalism but also developed abstract, yet socially grounded, conceptions of human nature. This article will concern itself with three particular concepts relating to human experience from two of the classic founders. I argue that one underappreciated concept from Emile Durkheimthe notion of fatalism-is the keystone for a bridge between two prominent conceptual categories central to Marxian and Durkheimian theory: alienation and anomie. Durkheim offers a theory of optimal social regulation that is more compelling than Marx's one-sided depiction of the alienated worker who is lost and adrift in an increasingly mechanized society. Durkheim, instead, presents us with the possibility of an empirical middle ground that exists between the margins of anomie and fatalism. Consequently, Durkheim offers us a multidimensional context from which to understand social regulation in modern societies, and he therefore proposes a framework that is able to account for more of the social world than Marx's theory of alienation can.