David W. Kling

Religiosity is Associated with Affective Status in Symptomatic HIV-infected African-American Women.

This study examined the relationship between religiosity and the affective and immune status of 33 HIV-seropositive mildly symptomatic African-American women (CDC stage B) in a replication of a prior study that reported an association between religiosity and affective and immune status in HIV-seropositive gay men. All women completed an intake interview, a set of psychosocial questionnaires, and provided a venous blood sample. Consistent with prior work, factor analysis of 12 religious-oriented response items revealed two distinct aspects to religiosity: religious coping and religious behavior. Religious coping (e.g. placing trust in God, seeking comfort in religion) was significantly associated with lower depression and anxiety. Regression analyses revealed the association between religious coping and depressive symptoms appears to be mediated by an active coping style. However, the association between religious coping and anxiety does not appear to be mediated by either active coping or sense of self-efficacy in these women. In contrast to prior work, neither religious coping nor religious behavior was significantly associated with immune status as measured by T helper-inducer (CD41) cell counts.

The New Divinity and Williams College, 1793-1836

The story is a familiar one, found in nearly every narrative text of American religious history. In the summer of 1806, five Williams College students met in a grove of trees to pray for divine guidance and to discuss their religious faith and calling. While seeking refuge from a summer rainstorm under a haystack, Samuel J. Mills, Jr., and the other four students consecrated their lives to overseas mis-

For Males Only: The Image of the Infidel and the Construction of Gender in the Second Great Awakening in New England

Throughout America’s past, during times when conservative, Protestant, male leaders have sensed a severe challenge to the faith, or a decline of spiritual ardor, or a threat to the stability of govemment, they have often targeted various individuals or groups as perpetrators of Christian subversion. ‘I’hc colonial period had its witches and covenant breakers, the nincteenth century had its infidels and confidence men, thc twcnticth century has had its communistic atheists and, more rcccntly, its sccular humanists. In each episode reactionary forces of Christianity worked fervently to identify thc culprits, turn back threats to h e faith, and Lake the offensive by promoting rencwed spiritual commitment. While the basic contours of these episodes are well hown, one prominent feature that until recently has been all but ignored is the role of gender. As a number of recent historical studics convincingly argue (Bendroth, 1992; DeBerg, 1990; Karlscn, 1987), underlying sexual tensions surface in timcs of profound strcss and conflict, and implicit assumptions about the social construction of gender manifest themselves in explicit ways. In our own day, with its general confusion about male identity, thc cvangclical phenomenon of “Promise Keepers’’ may be seen as an explicit affirmation of male identity wherein men assume leadership as husbands, fathers, and moral guardians. This paper focuses on one of the most contentious periods in American history, an era in which thc forces of conservative Protestantism reacted against threats to the faith with a passion bordering on paranoia (Davis, 1971; Hofstadter, 1967). Its specific focus is upon the image of the infidel seen through eyes of New England Congregational clergy. Over thirty years ago, Martin Marty (1961) traced the “usefulness” of this image in the ninetcenth century to its “uselessness” in the twentieth. “The infidel rose into prominence at those moments in American history,” Marty wrote, “when the churches wcre most embarrassed by social or theological questions’’ (p. 13). The infidel loomed large in the early nineteenth century as the infant nation underwent the separation of church and state, adjusted to voluntarism, and confronted new theological formulations. By h e Lwentieth