Lines that matter,lines that don't: Religion,boundaries,and the meaning of difference

Abstract

Recent work in cultural sociology has noted the importance of boundaries for understanding intergroup relations. Within the sociology of religion, this has manifested in research into interreligious conflict and cooperation. However, the current literature often assumes that boundaries have fixed qualities and generate clear consequences for group interaction. In this article, we draw on two data sets, comprising interviews and ethnographic data on ten different religious groups from a variety of faith traditions, to demonstrate that cultural resources, including religious beliefs, may be used to assess the meaning and saliency of boundaries. Particular qualities of boundaries shape how social actors understand and interpret group difference, suggesting that boundaries themselves are a site of struggle. Finally, we use the concept of relational principles as a heuristic device to organize and understand the different ways that our subjects manage and assess competing boundaries.

Keywords

boundaries culture identity religion

Given that [Orson Scott Card]’s a devout Mormon, of course he doesn't think gay marriage is a good thing. Let's face it − a lot of people feel that way! His article … speaks more to the courts and the separation of church and state than my own relationship with my partner − or for that matter, Scott's other gay friends. And speaking of my partner … Scott has never treated my relationship, or my partner, with anything but the utmost respect … His children regard us as a family unit, and I've never heard or felt the slightest breath of censure from any one of them. Scott's also a Republican, while I'm a Democrat − and we manage to discuss our differences over the table without ever getting loud or crazy. Personally, I think if more people did that, the world would be a better place.² (Singer and author Janis Ian on author Orson Scott Card’s public opposition to same-sex marriage)

Sociologists have posited a number of claims about the nature, permeability, and stability of social and symbolic boundaries (Alba, 2005, 2010; Ashforth et al., 2000; Moon, 2012; Wimmer, 2008a; Wright and Cho, 1992). This work contains two linked assumptions: (i) boundaries delineate “who is like me and who is not” (Edgell et al., 2006), suggesting that boundaries construct and maintain cultural and social evaluations of similarity and difference; and (ii) boundaries represent differential access to power, with groups on different sides of a particular boundary having unequal access to both material and symbolic resources (Alexander, 2007; Lamont, 1994). While much work has explored the cognitive dimensions of boundaries as well as the macro-level trends in social and symbolic boundaries (Edgell and Tranby, 2010; Edgell et al., 2006; Merino, 2010; Moon, 2012; Straughn and Feld, 2010; Theiss-Morse, 2009; Wimmer, 2008a), less work examines the evaluation of boundaries, particularly with regard to how meaning is used to render particular boundaries more or less relevant or permeable to individuals and groups. We suggest that the power dimensions of boundaries are not limited to differential access to resources. Rather, the meaning of boundaries is a site of struggle by social actors, with cultural resources coming to bear on how boundaries are understood, evaluated, and negotiated. Likewise, while some boundaries do carry hierarchical distinctions (Lamont, 1994), we suggest that not all boundaries represent perceived hierarchies. Rather, it is important to examine where and when these distinctions matter.

In the opening quote, Janis Ian recognizes real and meaningful boundaries based on religion, politics, and lifestyle. However, she deemphasizes the hardness of these boundaries based on her personal relationship with Orson Scott Card, as well as her understanding of friendship. She imagines permeable boundaries between herself and her friend, interpreting their relationship as one where differences can be discussed politely. This quote is taken from a posting on Ian’s website where she defends Card against criticism about his public statements on same-sex marriage, as well as critiques against her own friendship with him. Ian concludes by writing “to say someone is ‘crazy’ or a ‘lunatic’ because they deeply disagree with you, well, that's just as narrow, isn't it?”³ The meaning of the boundary between Ian and Card becomes a site of struggle with different parties interpreting the boundary in different ways. For Ian, the boundary between herself and Card is real but permeable because they share a similar understanding of how to communicate with one another across it. For some of Ian’s fans, who were upset by her friendship with Card, the political and religious gulf represented by the boundary cannot be overcome through shared communication norms, suggesting a significantly harder line.

In this article, we examine this phenomenon, demonstrating how specific cultural elements, including but not limited to religion, become salient for groups through struggle, negotiation, and context. The orienting questions for this research are: (i) How do boundaries work? What factors determine when a boundary is particularly important or unimportant in interaction? and (ii) How can we explain and understand these factors? To examine this, we look at the boundaries constructed by members of various religious and secular organizations. Religion is an ideal site to examine the differential meaning associated with boundaries, for two reasons: (i) religious beliefs and values are salient categories of personal identification for our research subjects, allowing us to see how some elements of religion mattered while other elements did not; and (ii) our respondents were comfortable discussing their religion in candid ways with us. While research demonstrates that people are often uncomfortable discussing topics such as race (Bonilla-Silva, 2010), we found that religion was a social category where distinction and difference seemed “safe” to discuss, providing us with rich data on who participants saw as similar to or different from them.

Our research suggests that the meaning and importance of religious boundaries are dynamic. Boundaries based on religious beliefs are intercut by other boundaries, such as political boundaries, that social actors see as holding equal or greater importance to determining who is similar to or different from them. As Ammerman (1997) suggests, when someone claims the identity of “Christian,” it can be as much about being a “good,” moral person as it can be about specific theological beliefs. Likewise, for our subjects, talk about religion was also talk about morality, politics, race, and sexuality. We suggest that this finding has several implications for how we understand religion, culture, and boundaries within sociology:

Having a belief or practice does not inherently mean that the belief or practice is significant for how a person views others. We cannot assume that groups with different beliefs do not share commonalities that transcend those beliefs. Likewise, we cannot assume that shared beliefs result in shared boundaries. Beliefs, including religious beliefs, are not deterministic; they may be resources in boundary creation and maintenance, or they may be less relevant than other cultural elements.

Because beliefs, values, and other cultural elements are resources for the creation and interpretation of boundaries but do not determine them, the content, practice, and meaning of beliefs matter. The lived properties of cultural elements such as faith highlight what boundaries mean in context and how salient they are for the individuals and groups in our analyses. For instance, different histories, organizational configurations, and recent interactions can result in an ideological or political issue being marginalized by one group and emphasized by another group, despite similar theologies.

To understand the meaning that social actors give to boundaries, we suggest two variables that emerge out of our data to describe how boundaries operate. These variables are permeability and relevance. Permeability refers to the ability of social actors to interact across a boundary. Social actors may recognize a boundary but see no difficulties in interacting with others across it. In fact, some boundaries, such as those between religious groups in an ecumenical organization, require cooperation and communication. If, however, a boundary is impermeable, communication across it will be difficult, uncomfortable, or hostile. Relevance refers to how important a particular boundary is for everyday interaction between groups or individuals on different sides of it. A relevant boundary will shape even casual interactions between people, while an irrelevant boundary will rarely come up. Boundaries possess both of these qualities, leading them to interact with one other (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Ideal-typical statements and examples of the four suggested boundary categories.

Relevant	Irrelevant
Permeable	“I am different from people who are X, but not so much that we can’t be friends or partners. Nonetheless, we find ourselves having to discuss our differences a great deal.” Examples: ecumenical religious groups working together, a married couple with very different cultural backgrounds.	“I am somewhat different from people who are X, with many points of similarity, but it doesn’t come up at all, and we can still be friendly. It's just in the background.” Examples: symbolic ethnicity, friends with moderately different religious backgrounds.
Impermeable	“I am very different from people who are X, and therefore refuse to interact with them, or see them as an out-group.” Examples: stereotypical bigotry, out-group antagonism, completely ignoring or refusing to be in contact with people from another group.	“I am very different from people who are X, but as long as I don’t think about it, it doesn't come up in day-to-day interaction.” Examples: polite neighbors from different social groups, people who are friendly with each other at work, but have difficulty talking about anything but their jobs with each other.

Further, as indicated above, the relevance or permeability of a boundary results from the meaning that social actors operating with those boundaries give them. To describe the kinds of meaning that people use to render boundaries more or less permeable and relevant, we rely on relational principles⁴ as a heuristic device. Relational principles are how participants understand and differentiate themselves from others. We find that our participants categorize others based on four primary relational principles: Truth, Test, Tact, and Tolerance. Through using these four relational principles, religious boundaries are given meaning that renders them more or less permeable and relevant. In subsequent sections we will further explain both the qualities of boundaries we have identified as well as the four relational principles. For now, we turn to a brief review of existing literature on boundaries to ground our theoretical orientation.

Social and symbolic boundaries

In the last decade, cultural sociology has drawn attention to how boundaries delineate social hierarchies and divisions among groups of people (Lamont and Molnár, 2002). Boundaries describe “who is like me and who is not” (Edgell et al., 2006), which has social consequences for interactions with others, identity formation, and the distribution of resources in a given society. Broadly speaking, we understand boundaries as shaping who people will acknowledge as worthy of positive or negative attention. The study of social boundaries in America was pioneered by Michèle Lamont (1994, 2000; Lamont et al., 1996). Lamont and Molnár find that work on boundaries spans many areas in sociology, including “cognition, social and collective identity, commensuration, census categories, cultural capital, cultural membership, racial and ethnic group positioning, hegemonic masculinity, professional jurisdictions, scientific controversies, group rights, immigration, and contentious politics” (Lamont and Molnár, 2002: 167). They describe two kinds of boundaries in the literature: symbolic boundaries and social boundaries. Symbolic boundaries are “conceptual distinctions” that we use to organize our reality creating a sense of the world (Lamont and Molnár, 2002: 168). Not all symbolic boundaries become social boundaries. In order for a boundary to move from symbolic to social, it needs to be widely held in an institutional field, sufficiently unambiguous, and enforced (Lamont, 1994).

Beyond Lamont, many researchers use symbolic boundaries as a lens to study how identity is constructed and maintained for a variety of social groups (Ajrouch, 2004; Moon, 2012; Sherman, 2005; Theiss-Morse, 2009; Vasquez and Wetzel, 2009).⁵ These studies capture the dynamics that shape symbolic boundaries and demonstrate their influence on group behavior and adaptation to changing contexts. In each of these works, though, the authors are (unsurprisingly) studying boundaries that matter for the participants. However, some boundaries are irrelevant to participants’ interactions with others. Because social and symbolic boundaries can be sites of conflict, groups and individuals may deny the saliency of a boundary for their lives, rejecting how they are “supposed” to feel about it.⁶ For example, Yukich (2010) finds that some religious groups construct distinct, yet inclusive, faith-based collective identities. Beyond this, though, there is little empirical work on boundaries examining how people can acknowledge a social boundary and yet minimize its relevance as unimportant to their social interactions and view of others.

Boundaries are understood as either “bright” or “blurry” (Alba, 2005), representing how ambiguous they are. For many individuals and groups, others exist somewhere between “us” and “them” in a variety of ways. These others play an important role in developing identities (Fine, 2012). The brightness and blurriness of boundaries are, therefore, not a given, but are determined by context, history, and meaning (Tilly, 2002). Beyond “brightness” and “blurriness,” other scholars discuss additional qualities of boundaries such as permeability⁷ or strength (Alba, 2005, 2010; Ashforth et al., 2000; Wright and Cho, 1992). Permeability, as discussed by Ashforth et al. (2000), is the ability for different roles in one’s life to “leak” into separate spheres, such as having to work while at home, or bringing children to work. Permeability has also been understood to mean the ability for people to traverse boundaries between people such as those of class or race (Wright and Cho, 1992). However, the factors that determine the permeability of a boundary or the ultimate interactional consequences of boundary permeability for everyday interaction have not been explored in-depth by many researchers. Alba (2005) shows how bright boundaries can be more impermeable on a broad level, though he does not show how boundaries can be reshaped by local contexts such as congregations or personal histories.⁸

To summarize, the current literature lacks: (i) attention to the interactional contexts and forces that shape the permeability of a boundary; (ii) the role of meaning in determining participants’ understanding of the relevancy of existing social boundaries; and (iii) a way to organize participants’ ways of relating to boundaries. We propose that the present research addresses these gaps in the literature by presenting theoretical concepts that allow us to discuss how local meaning can shape the way social actors perceive boundaries. Before moving to our analysis, we turn to a brief review of the methods used to gather our data.

Methods

This article emerges out of two larger research projects. One project (the Josephsohn data set, JDS) contains 55 semi-structured interviews with members of four different theistic and non-theistic organizations. In particular, Josephsohn interviewed people from congregations that identified with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran church Missouri Synod, Reform Judaism, and Ethical Humanism. The other project (the Fuist data set, FDS) contains 73 semi-structured interviews with members of six progressive religious organizations in Chicago, as well as ethnographic and archival research with these organizations. The groups include an LGBT-identified Jewish Synagogue, an African Methodist Episcopal congregation, a multi-racial and multi-denominational Protestant congregation, an LGBT-identified Catholic organization, a Mennonite commune, and an evangelical Christian commune.⁹ We will discuss specific groups and participants as we reference them below.

The studies were conducted independently of one another with different overall research aims, but shared a common interest in examining how understandings of religion play into social classification and behavior. The JDS focused specifically on questions of how religion serves as a cultural resource in the construction of boundaries, while the FDS focused on the role of religion in shaping collective action. The two interview instruments were developed separately, but contain several parallel questions and themes, including questions about who respondents see as allied or similar to them and who they see as opposed or dissimilar. In both studies, we sampled groups and participants with an eye towards diversity to create a panel of informed respondents with differing points of view. We turn now to explore how meaning rendered boundaries more or less permeable or salient.

Boundary permeability

Boundaries are “permeable” when social actors understand them as easy to transgress, bridge, cooperate, or communicate across. Boundaries are “impermeable” when social actors understand them as difficult to transgress, bridge, cooperate, or communicate across. These concepts represent the poles of a continuum. In other words, a boundary is not either “impermeable” or “permeable”; there is a range between them. The permeability of boundaries can shift over time as they are debated, challenged, and referenced in social struggle. Likewise, a boundary may be rendered permeable or impermeable based on changing social circumstances or new information. In other words, a boundary is not inherently impermeable or permeable; it is rendered impermeable or permeable through the meaning it is imbued with by social actors who recognize it. In the example in the introduction with Janis Ian and Orson Scott Card, Ian presented the boundary between her and Card as one that was permeable. They were different in ways that were socially and symbolically important, but by subscribing to similar relational principles, they easily communicate across those boundaries. In this section, we provide evidence from the two data sets demonstrating that boundaries have varying degrees of permeability and how permeability is often a result of experience, debate, and conflict.

Edward (FDS), a politically and theologically progressive Christian who is a part of Jesus People USA (JPUSA), an evangelical commune in Chicago, presented an understanding of how political beliefs could be used to reinterpret religious boundaries. He stated the following about belief and practice:

Since I question whether or not we can know the full truth … it is better to focus on what you know to be right practice rather than whether or not you “believe” the right thing. And part of that, too, is a reaction to, like, how, many denominations are there? There are hundreds of them, you know. And they get in big arguments over, like, stupid minor points.

Here, Edward suggests that “right practice” is a bridge that allows people to come together and avoid “big arguments” over “stupid minor points.” The language Edward uses suggests that he recognizes the boundaries between denominations, but sees them as traversable by focusing on shared practices as opposed to divergent beliefs.¹⁰ Edward continued, saying:

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all religions lead to God, but I’d rather hang out with a Muslim or atheist that is, you know, honestly, like, helping out the poor and loving them and treating them as real humans, I’d rather hang out with that person than hang out with the, you know, right-wing, not to throw politics into it, but the right-wing Tea Partier that like doesn’t want to give their taxes to social programs.

The above exchange highlights that Edward is using political beliefs and actions to interpret the permeability of the boundaries he is discussing. He suggests that theological divisions, while real, would not prevent his ability to make connections with someone with the “right practices” of “helping out the poor.” He also sees a disdain for “social programs” that would help the poor as the antithesis of these right practices. As such, he suggests that he feels more affinity with someone who is theologically different than him (a Muslim or an atheist) than he does with someone who potentially shares at least some of his religious beliefs (a “Tea Partier”), but has very different political beliefs. For Edward, when theological boundaries are layered with political meaning, they become permeable through shared civic values. In contrast, the “impermeable” boundary is the political one that separates him from a “Tea Partier.” Edward draws on political meaning to interpret a religious boundary, ultimately minimizing the importance of theological differences between himself and either a hypothetical Muslim or an atheist.

The use of socio-political meaning to interpret a boundary’s permeability was common among our respondents. For example, Brendan (FDS), a politically left-wing Christian, made a similar statement about how he was unable to connect with other Christian students when he was in college because of their politics:

The college campus groups like Christian Crusade and … InterVarsity … They were very concerned with personal purity. They thought that homosexuality was a double sin. For me to even think of it as a single sin is crazy, and they thought that it was a compounded sin, and then other stuff … It made me really uncomfortable being around them.

Brendan included this as a part of his conversion story. Raised without a strong religious upbringing, he discovered Christianity in college, and immediately connected it to left-wing politics, about which he was already passionate. For Brendan, however, this meant an inability to connect with the Christians on his campus, who he saw as too conservative. The religious connection Brendan shared with these groups failed to make the political boundary between them any less impermeable.

While the above examples show how political meaning is used to interpret religious boundaries, we also found instances of boundary permeability relating to theological distinctions. For instance, Marcy (JDS), a Reform Jewish participant said “It’s really just a matter of belief, half my friends are atheists and they’re great people, great and nice people, you should just be a good person and they’re good people.” Marcy indicated during the interview that religious beliefs are relevant boundaries for her, yet her ability to hold friendships with atheists attests to the permeability of these theological boundaries. Similarly, Harvey (JDS), an ELCA participant says:

I do have a lot of friends who are Jewish, and I view them as, sort of, in terms of what I believe, sort of, half way out. Like, there is the spirituality and things like that, but the very specific beliefs, like their belief and, you know, from what I understand they don’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God, so in that respect, we’re very different, but I feel like the things we have in common, tradition, and different values like that.

Harvey’s theological boundary in this passage is permeable in that the boundaries Harvey sees between himself and Jews leaves a liminal space between “in” and “out,” suggesting that Jews who share some basic assumptions with Harvey exist somewhere in the space between theological “outsider” and “insider.” Because of this, Harvey can identify with them, at least somewhat, despite seeing them as having important differences from him. Many cases of boundary permeability, however, are not as cut and dry as the cases above. The permeability or impermeability of a boundary is not always a given, but may be shaped in ongoing interactions and discourses. We turn now to examples where interviewees provided narratives of having a boundary’s permeability shaped in light of changing circumstances.

Permeability and impermeability are not static qualities of boundaries. Rather, the permeability or impermeability of a boundary becomes salient as the boundary is debated, discussed, or used as a marker of social conflict. Power struggles and conflicts, definitional debates, as well as attempts to make social situations more equitable, can all serve to make a boundary more or less permeable. Alan (FDS), a gay Jewish man, for example, related a story of how his view of a group was changed through interactions with them. Alan suggested that he has always understood that the Salvation Army was a Christian group with culturally conservative values that did not line up with his progressive views. Nonetheless, he said that he remembered thinking that their anti-poverty work was worthwhile, and felt connected to them through what he perceived as a shared concern about economic inequality. This changed, however, when he first moved to Chicago’s largest gay neighborhood. He remembered the Salvation Army refusing to take donation money that gay bars had raised and, since then, said he is “disgusted” by them and sees “virtually no point in having [a] conversation” with someone from the Salvation Army. Elaborating, Alan suggested that his understanding of this event was a result of his experiences as a Jewish person:

Jews, as a whole, we are going to look at any group and say “live in peace.” As social activists … if [a] group is being harassed … we would sit up and go and stop it … Whereas every Evangelical Christian I have ever met has tried [to convert me] at some point. Go away! I find [that] very offensive because it’s against my culture, it’s against my belief system.

We see here the logic of Alan’s rejection of what he perceives as the Salvation Army’s position. Alan’s experiences with Judaism provide him with a worldview that orients him towards social justice. He relates to other groups that understand their religious beliefs in similar ways, as well as groups who share his particular vision of justice, which revolves around economic, gender, and sexual equality. The Episcopalians, for example, were a denomination that he feels an affinity with because he perceives them as both LGBT-affirming and intellectual. When he was confronted with the Salvation Army’s refusal to take money raised by gay bars, it switched a boundary he had previously understood as permeable to being impermeable. He found that there was “no point” in talking to someone from the Salvation Army; they represent a group with which he cannot communicate.

Jimmy (FDS), a member of Reba Place Fellowship (RPF), a Mennonite commune in and around Chicago, presented a very different narrative. He is a gay man who initially joined the commune with the intention of remaining celibate, which at the time he felt was God’s call for gay and lesbian individuals. When Jimmy joined, RPF was officially non-affirming of same-sex relationships. Despite this, Jimmy felt called to join the group because of their theology of peace and sharing. During his time in the community, Jimmy began to explore various understandings of sexuality and theology and moved away from thinking that celibacy was God’s call for LGBT Christians. Additionally, LGBT inclusion was an issue about which many of the younger community members and a handful of older members felt particularly strong. As a result, RPF was primed for a discussion of this issue.

The community decided to handle the issue in a way that avoided talking about specific policy changes. Jimmy said that RPF did not want to “frame it as a debate,” but that, rather, “we want it to be sharing, leading to dialogue, conversation.” The community thus created small groups for members to discuss their experiences, beliefs, and feelings on sexuality and LGBT issues. A lead group, that included Jimmy as well as members with a variety of opinions on the topic, coordinated these conversations. The initial outcome of these discussions was, in effect, agreement to disagree on the issue, while accepting (a) that the official policy eventually needs to be changed since it did not reflect group consensus, and (b) that the harmony of the fellowship was more important than reaching agreement on this particular issue.

This second point is important for our purposes. The presence of Jimmy and other members and friends of RPF who have come out as LGBT or supportive of them made the boundary between those who regard same-sex relationships as sinful and those who do not highly relevant for interaction in the community. Despite this, the community has made efforts to make this boundary permeable. In Jimmy’s words,

At first glance, looked at from the outside, it seems pretty obvious that Reba is not LGBT affirming, but as a gay person who is involved with Reba, I've felt comfortable and safe enough to come out and explore this about myself while at Reba, for one … People in the fellowship really do believe that, you know, you love your neighbor. They love those around them. Everyone believes those concepts, but Reba actually has practice and experience in living that out, I think. It has to be lived out constantly, every day, in Fellowship life. Everybody in the Fellowship does not agree with each other. That's just the way it is! And not only do they have to spend time together and be under the same roof, they have to be relational and continue on in conversations … I guess what I would say, even the people who don't take an affirming stance on LGBT relationships and who affirm the documents that Reba has in place about same-sex relationships, even they are open to dialogue, open to discussion, open to stay relational.

The experience of RPF with LGBT issues, as well as Alan’s experience with the Salvation Army, detailed above, show how boundaries can become a point of contention in social struggle, but also can be rendered more or less permeable through struggle and dialogue. Boundaries are a way that we make sense of various kinds of difference, but the existence of a boundary does not necessarily mean an inability to transcend that boundary. For Alan, perceiving the Salvation Army as homophobic meant that the boundary became impermeable. They are not a group he can understand as connected to him in any way, despite a shared concern for the poor. RPF, on the other hand, made the boundary between members with regard to beliefs on sexuality highly relevant, but addressed the issue in such a way that this boundary was rendered permeable. The desire to “stay relational,” in Jimmy’s words, meant that even people on opposite sides of the boundary can “fellowship” with each other and are open to discussion and dialogue. Part of what renders a particular boundary more or less permeable is what relational principles come to bear in interpreting the meaning of the boundary. We will return to discussing these relational principles later. For now, we turn to discussing the relevance of boundaries.

Boundary relevance

We define boundaries as “relevant” when social actors recognize them as important to interactions with and evaluations of groups or individuals on the other side of them. Conversely, we define boundaries as “irrelevant” when social actors recognize them as unimportant to social interactions with and evaluations of groups or individuals on the other side of them. Like permeability, relevance and irrelevance represent the poles of a continuum. Likewise, boundaries are not inherently relevant or irrelevant. Rather, relevance is a quality that is given to boundaries through meaning and interaction, suggesting (as we will demonstrate below) that boundary relevance can change. In this section, we discuss how boundaries can be more or less relevant to people as determined by a confluence of social factors relating to the meaning that actors use to interpret them.

While individuals may be aware of the relevance or irrelevance of a boundary for others, people often have their own views of whether or not a particular boundary should matter for interaction. For example, asked what she thinks of religious belief, Eve (JDS), a middle aged self-identified Ethical Humanist, replied, “Well, I don’t believe in [religion]. I think it’s nonsense really, but it doesn’t matter because you can be a good person and believe nonsense.” For Eve, being an atheist is less relevant for evaluating others than being “a good person,” a nebulous term for not harming people, being generally agreeable, and not forcing one’s beliefs on others.¹¹ She went on to summarize her position, saying, “Don’t challenge my beliefs and I’m not going to challenge yours.” Eve is among the many self-identified secular participants in the JDS who value their secular beliefs, but see no reason to use them as the sole (or even a salient) criterion for interacting with others. Similarly, Victor suggests that just because he agrees with someone does not mean he approves of how relevant they make their beliefs:

I think some [members of the naturalist movement, The Brights] are jerks … We agree on our belief system. I have no doubts in how the world was created, and all that stuff. But the way that I act is much more with humility and gratitude and out of your face. I actually don’t think it is that salient for anybody else to believe what I believe.

Victor and Eve both recognize the relevance that others give to theological beliefs and specifically reject that approach. The theological boundary between believer and non-believer is not relevant to these participants insofar as they do not think it should matter for interaction. One should treat others similarly regardless of whether or not they share different theological beliefs than you. In fact, both Eve and Victor suggest that it is problematic to make boundaries about beliefs relevant for interaction. Conversely, John (JDS), a member of the Ethical Humanist Society, describes a boundary he perceives as relevant. John characterizes his interactions with religious people as hostile and averse, saying that all religions are “nonsense.” John sees the boundary between believer and non-believer as extremely relevant, impacting his evaluations of religious people and his desire to interact with them in the first place. Secular Humanist participant Reggie (JDS) additionally suggests that he sees religious individuals as morally problematic:

Once you get away from the idea of a God who is going to reward or punish you in the afterlife, it makes you realize more what is going on in this life. You realize if there is no afterlife, there is only this life. There is nobody giving out what I call demerits in the sky to punish people because they were bad. It’s up to us to make sure this life is how it is supposed to be … That is kind of why I am with the secular humanists and the atheists.

Reggie and participants like him see the difference between secularists and religious individuals as relevant both for defining themselves and in morally evaluating others. In Reggie’s view, those who believe in an afterlife are less prone to act when it is necessary because they believe that an outside force will take care of negative situations and make good events occur.

Groups may attempt to make a particular boundary more or less relevant in a given circumstance. Likewise, the relevancy of a boundary may push the group to think about how permeable the boundary is. At one community that Fuist examined, Neighborhood Church (NC),¹² members found that a previously irrelevant boundary had suddenly become very important, resulting in changing interactions between members. Eventually, however, members found ways to make this newly relevant boundary permeable. They began to interpret its relevancy in new ways as well. NC is a diverse church that recognizes the relevancy of the boundaries between different racial and ethnic communities in the congregation and engages in many practices to make the boundaries between these groups permeable, including conducting services in a variety of languages, having different kinds of music, and encouraging diverse worship styles. However, as several members pointed out, there were unrecognized theological boundaries in the community that were made relevant when some members of the church began to explore alternative decision-making structures or address controversial issues in the community.

The relevancy of theological boundaries became apparent when the congregation began to have difficulty in selecting a new leader based on the decision-making process they had in place at the time. Suddenly, members of the congregation who had assumed theological homogeneity because the issue was previously not relevant found that they disagreed very strongly about congregational decision-making. This disagreement ultimately resulted in a stymied leadership selection process. As one member, Blake, put it,

A lot of people readily see and accept diversity in skin color, language, customs, but not necessarily in terms of how people think. So, we have a lot more diversity than we recognize. Some of that diversity is based off of differences in education, or in theologies … things like “what kind of church polity do you understand?” So we've got some people who feel like the [correct] way of doing things is much more communal. We make the decisions together. The congregation is where the Holy Spirit is heard. So they're always wanting to make more sorts of congregational decisions, more open and transparent decisions. A number of people … wanted to streamline some things and move towards a more representational style of leadership and a slightly different polity where we're going to trust this group of people to make these decisions and that's how we're going to do it, and we're going to get different people in there.

Here, Blake lays out how the community had long been aware of relevant boundaries with regard to race and ethnicity, but had only recently discovered, through the leader selection process, that they also had unrecognized theological boundaries that suddenly became relevant. The result of this recognition has been to try to find ways to make these boundaries more permeable as well as to reinterpret what the relevancy of the boundaries means. Blake said that NC is “unanimous” in the idea that “God is all people, together” and thus seeks to promote diversity. As such, they tend to interpret relevant boundaries as things that should shape interaction, albeit in ways on which members agree. They have instituted, for example, after-service conversations about controversial topics in an effort to render relevant theological boundaries permeable. Erik, an NC member, discusses this:

We've been trying to facilitate conversations once a month … we did one on theology, we did one on sexuality and gender identity … There's a number of other things, and I think it's a really good and healthy practice to try and learn how to [talk to each other]. Because that is a good model for living in a world where there are different people with different points of view. There is the conservative Christian and the liberal Christian and the non-Christian. And people, God calls us to live together and love each other, and so doing that, like someone who is pro-life sitting down and loving someone who is pro-choice or vice versa, is a good practice.

In these examples, we see how NC has attempted to deal with theological boundaries that have become relevant, involving both specific moral questions and church polity, by attempting to create practices that allow them to render the relevant boundaries permeable. Despite this, they have not gone out of their way to minimize the relevancy of the boundaries. As Erik’s quote suggests, their practices continue to emphasize that there are legitimate theological differences between members. Rather than reduce the relevancy of the boundary, however, they shift the meaning of the relevance. As Erik suggests, learning to interact with people who you recognize as different from you, rendering relevant boundaries permeable, is an important practice for Christians who want to live out God’s call to “live together and love each other.” We suggest this has two implications: (i) as we have argued, the recognition of a boundary does not dictate that people on either side of it must have specific feelings or behaviors with regard to those on the opposite side; and (ii) rather, the meaning that is used to interpret the boundary shapes how people believe and behave with regard to others. Because congregants at NC have agreed that tolerance is an important way for the members of the community to interact with one another, the relevance of the boundary shapes interaction but does not halt it. We turn now to this and other relational principles as a tool to categorize the kinds of meaning that participants use to interpret boundaries.

Relational principles as a tool to categorize and explain the meaning of boundaries

In this work, we have presented two theoretical concepts, relevance and permeability, to make sense of how boundaries work at the cognitive and interactional levels. These tools describe the qualities of a particular boundary, but do not fully answer our question regarding how people understand and contest boundaries. Sociologists require a way of organizing these assertions for comparison and analysis. The means by which we compare how social actors contest and interpret boundaries, ultimately influencing their relevancy and permeability, is through a concept called relational principles. “Relational principles” are a concept developed by Josephsohn that we use to highlight patterns in how participants understand and differentiate themselves from others. A relational principle is both relational, in that it focuses on actual groups embedded in social actors’ everyday and imagined lives, and a principle, reflecting a perspective on an arena-specific aspect of the world, rather than an abstract whole world (Bourdieu, 1984). Relational principles offer a means for categorizing why people deem particular, commonly accepted boundaries as (ir)relevant or (im)permeable, as well as how people contest and interpret boundaries. Through relational principles, we can see broader trends in participants’ assertions, which we will detail below.

For this article, we discuss four major relational principles and how they are connected to the interpretation of boundaries. The four major principles are Truth, Test, Tolerance, and Tact (see Table 2). Participants who use the first, Truth, evaluate others by the extent to which they conform to the participant’s beliefs about religion and morality. Participants who use Tact believe that groups and individuals should not interfere with others, allowing them to believe and act as they choose. They actively avoid critiquing others (except to critique them for not adhering to the Tact principle), taking a “live and let live” approach. Those who have Tolerance rely on three criteria for understanding others: (i) accepting others with different beliefs, (ii) avoiding claims of absolute truth, and (iii) reaching out to others with different beliefs. Finally, those who Test define their sense of difference from others by evaluating where others stand on a particular belief or issue. Each principle provides insight into how people understand themselves in relation to boundaries as they explain why particular boundaries are relevant or permeable.

Table 2.

Relational principles.

Relation principle	Definition
Truth	A Truth user evaluates others by how much they conform to the user’s specific beliefs about religion, morality, etc. Example: “I find it hard to connect with people who don’t accept Christ as their Lord and personal savior.”
Tolerance	A Tolerance user evaluates others based on three criteria: (i) accepting others with different beliefs; (ii) believing that one does not hold absolute truth; and (iii) having the willingness to learn/interact with others. Example: “I’m a Muslim, but I think it’s important to recognize the wisdom and validity of other points of view, and get along with people who feel the same way.”
Tact	A Tact user evaluates others based on the extent to which others allow people to believe as they choose. Example: “The world would be a better place if everyone wasn’t so pushy about their beliefs and just let people think what they wanted.”
Test	A Test user evaluates others in terms of where they stand on a particular issue. Example: “I don’t care what religion you are, as long as you’re pro-life.”

The Truth relational principle was one of the most widespread principles in the JDS. Participants discussed their sense of difference with others in terms of beliefs about what was true and false. Those who were “less different” from them were more correct, while those who were “more different” were more false. For example, John, the Secular Humanist mentioned above, understands himself as holding a rational position and views religious groups as believing in “nonsense.” John is not alone in his sense of difference based on Truth. Malinda is a 36-year-old housewife and mother in the Missouri Synod Lutheran church who said, “You’re either with Christ or against him… Jesus says it in the Bible, and that’s how things are… [other religions are different from me] because they don’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God.” While the content of Malinda’s beliefs are different from John’s (John is a secular humanist while Malinda is a committed Christian), the organizing principle for evaluating difference that she uses is nearly identical to his. Both of them base which groups they identify with on how closely the other groups’ beliefs align with their understanding of Truth. For John and Malinda, theological boundaries are highly relevant for their understanding of others and the world. As such, for both participants, we suggest that the relational principle that organizes whether or not a boundary is relevant is “Truth.” When a social actor interprets the meaning of a particular boundary based on the “Truth” principle, they suggest that the boundary they are operating with is particularly impermeable and/or relevant. Those on the other side of the boundary are wrong and, if a social actor understands the boundary through this principle, the boundary in question will be difficult for them to communicate across or avoid in interaction once it is raised.

Conversely, we return to a comment by Edward used to discuss the permeability of boundaries earlier in this article. Edward’s suggestion that he would rather “hang out” with someone who shared his politics but not his faith than vice versa interprets religious boundaries using the “Test” principle. While he recognizes that there is a relevant boundary based on theology between himself and atheists and Muslims (he would not say that “all religions lead to God”), he nonetheless suggests that this boundary is rendered permeable if someone on the other side of it meets his political criteria. Conversely, someone who does not feel and behave the same way as him on that social issue would not be someone he would interact with, despite the implication that they may share religious beliefs. In other words, Edward uses a socio-political “Test” to render this particular boundary more or less permeable. He effectively says that if you are progressive on economic issues, the religious boundary between us is permeable. We suggest that the Test principle will often result in this sort of boundary interpretation: if you are “x,” then “y” is less important, but if you are not “x,” then “y” is more important. In the above case, if you are progressive on economic issues, then the religious boundary between us is more permeable.

As a third example, we will explore the Tact principle. In the opening statement by Janis Ian, she draws on the “Tact” principle to interpret the boundary between herself and Orson Scott Card as more permeable. While they disagree, the fact that they can “discuss their differences over the table without ever getting loud or crazy” suggests that Ian is interpreting the boundary using the principle of Tact. We saw this in the earlier example of Alan, the Jewish man who understood the boundary between himself and evangelical Christians as impermeable because they try to convert him to their religion. He finds this offensive, and against his culture and belief system. Rather, as he indicates in the interview, he feels an affinity with people who have a “live in peace” attitude. Alan also uses the “Test” principle to evaluate boundaries as well. He found the boundary between himself and the Salvation Army to be impermeable based on his understanding that they are LGBT-exclusive, while he suggests feeling a connection to Episcopalians because they tend to be LGBT-affirming. For Alan, both Tact and Test are important to evaluate boundaries between himself and others, depending on the circumstances.

Finally, the example of the discussion held by RPF members on LGBT-inclusion suggests the use of the Tolerance principle. As Jimmy from RPF stated, the community accepts that members disagree with each other, recognizing relevant boundaries to interaction, but is choosing to interpret those boundaries with an eye towards respecting each other’s differing beliefs. As Jimmy said, the community intends to continue to fellowship and “stay relational” with each other, despite disagreements on this particular issue. Ultimately, there are many ways for participants to negotiate their relationships with various boundaries, but relational principles offer a means of describing salient criteria that people use to place others on one side of a boundary or the other. Further, relational principles are able to describe and organize the forces that transform a boundary from relevant to irrelevant, or from permeable to impermeable.

Conclusions: Boundaries as resources in conflict and sites of struggle

In this article, thus far, we have argued two things: (i) that boundaries have qualities, which we are calling permeability and relevance, which are shaped by the meaning social actors use to interpret them; and (ii) that “relational principles” provide a useful tool for categorizing, understanding, and comparing the kinds of meaning that social actors use to interpret a particular boundary as more or less permeable or relevant. In this final section, we will explore the ramifications for these assertions for understanding the role of boundaries in social conflict, as well as examine what our findings imply for religion specifically. First, we suggest that it is not sufficient to assume that boundaries represent antagonism or hierarchy between groups. Rather, as we detail above, a particular boundary can be used as a resource in a conflict that is only tangentially related to that boundary, or a particular boundary can represent a site of struggle in and of itself. In other words, the meaning, interpretation, and use of a boundary is not static, and we must recognize this to fully understand boundaries. Second, with regard to religion, we suggest that these findings demonstrate the diversity of religious understandings. While religion may be used to construct boundaries between people, religious boundaries may also be used to suggest similarity between different social groups, especially when religious boundaries are interpreted with a relational principle.

Returning to Edward’s (FDS) quote above that we used as an example of the “Test” principle, Edward uses his stated transgression of the recognized theological boundary between himself, an evangelical Christian, and atheists and Muslims, as a way to talk about the socio-political boundary between himself and conservatives. In other words, Edward’s suggestion that the boundary between him and progressive non-Christians is permeable, based on a Test principle, is a statement about his own political identity and his rejection of conservative values. Many members of JPUSA, the Christian commune that Edward is a part of, similarly drew on relational principles to interpret boundaries between themselves and others. For example, one member, Mike, who works for JPUSA’s in-house screen-printing company, related a story about how the people at his job have challenged Christian groups who have asked them to print inflammatory pro-life shirts. When I asked Mike to elaborate, he explained that pro-life groups, knowing that JPUSA is a Christian group, will often ask them to print pro-life t-shirts that use antagonistic terminology in their slogans, such as “baby-killer.” Mike said that they have confronted these groups, suggesting they change the messages on the shirts to be affirming, using a slogan like “We love babies,” rather than an antagonistic slogan, because they do not believe that hostile rhetoric is either Christian or helpful to the pro-life cause. In our terminology, they were using a “Tolerance” principle to render the boundary between themselves and these other Christians less permeable, effectively saying “if you cannot be kind and fair to people you disagree with, then we are not like you.”

Stepping back from our data, we can imagine social circumstances where we would see this sort of process. As an example, we suggest the secular progressives who defended the placement of the Park51 Islamic Center near ground zero in New York. While, in a different circumstance, secular progressives and Muslims may find the boundary between them to be impermeable, prohibiting cooperation, many secular progressives were incensed by what they perceived of as the religious bigotry of people opposed to the Islamic Center. For some people, the act of prohibiting the building of a religious structure showed a great deal of bias and incivility, thereby violating the Tact principle. Others, using the Tolerance principle, could be upset because those protesting the building of the community center were not being accepting of other religious points of view. In either case, transgressing the boundary between themselves and Muslims became a politically meaningful act based on how a relational principle was used to understand the various boundaries in play. The boundary between secular progressives and Muslims, when interpreted with the relational principle of Tolerance or Tact, was rendered permeable in this particular circumstance, and thus became a resource in a social conflict.

Likewise, boundaries themselves can be sites of struggle, in ways on which our categories of boundary qualities and relational principles can help shed light. Returning to the discussion of RPF and the debate over the acceptance of LGBT persons into the community, we see how the permeability of a boundary is shaped by an ongoing debate over which relational principle should be used to interpret it. Traditionally, the boundary had been interpreted with the “Truth” principle: there was a “right” and “wrong” view on being LGBT, rendering the boundary impermeable. LGBT persons were not allowed to join the community. However, as detailed, members have begun pushing for the community to switch to understanding the boundary by using the “Tolerance” principle. Rather than view the issue in terms of “right” and “wrong,” the members of the community on either side of the boundary should understand themselves in fellowship with one another and be able to cooperate and communicate despite differences on the issue.

This shift demonstrates how the boundary itself is a site of struggle. We can imagine other circumstances where we would also see the qualities of boundaries as sites of social struggle. As Bryson (2012) points out, acts of violence such as terrorism and hate crimes are, in some respects, an attempt to render a particular boundary less permeable or more relevant by firmly and dramatically drawing lines between who “us” and “them” are. Responses to these acts, on the other hand, often try to render those same boundaries more permeable or less relevant by suggesting that the people on opposite sides of them are not so different. Consider the media coverage in the wake of the 2012 attacks by Wade Michael Page, the white supremacist who murdered seven Sikhs while they attended services at their temple in Wisconsin. Much public reaction to the shooting focused on how Sikhs are peace-loving people who are, effectively, “not so different from the rest of us” (Bryson, 2012). This suggested an attempt to use the “Tolerance” principle to render a boundary that the attack made relevant more permeable, suggesting that the boundary itself is a site of social conflict.

Finally, with regard to particular religious beliefs, our findings demonstrate that religion, like boundaries, is not static. Religious beliefs do not inherently create difference and divisions between people. Rather, religion, particularly when interpreted with regard to relational principles, may also be a source for forging connections between people. Our data suggest that those who interpret religious boundaries in certain ways, perhaps using a Truth principle with regard to religious beliefs, may forge particularly impermeable and relevant boundaries, implying the possibility of social conflict. Conversely, though, social actors who interpret religious boundaries with the principle of Tolerance may facilitate, and perhaps even necessitate, interfaith cooperation across religious boundaries. Likewise, as the examples of Alan and Edward demonstrate, interpreting religious boundaries using a socio-political “Test” can mean that the subjectively perceived similarity of social actors may not map perfectly on to religious boundaries. We argue that religion must not be understood purely in terms of beliefs, nor in terms of existing social boundaries, but rather that many forms of meaning shape the subjective understanding that social actors have of “who is like me.”

In conclusion, we suggest that neither boundaries nor religion can be understood as static. Rather, the meaning that social actors interpret boundaries with orients how they understand others on different sides of those boundaries, and whether or not they see them as out-groups or antagonists at all. As such, by examining how social actors use relational principles to interpret boundaries, potentially rendering them more or less relevant or permeable, we can examine the specific ways that boundaries shape how social actors understand others. Through this, we can begin to better understand how boundaries may serve as resources in social conflict or as sites of struggle themselves in complicated and unexpected ways.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Loyola University Chicago and the Arthur J. Schmitt foundation for fellowships that supported this research, as well as our colleagues in the Loyola University Chicago Sociology of Religion working group and the Chicago Area Group for the Study of Religious Communities (CAGSRC) for comments on earlier versions of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Todd Nicholas Fuist is a visiting assistant professor in Western Washington University's Department of Sociology. His research interests are in the integration of politics and religion in progressive religious communities. His work has previously appeared in Qualitative Sociology and Contexts Magazine.

Thomas J. Josephsohn is an adjunct instructor for Park University's Department of Sociology. He studies how religion and secularism shape opinions of religious and non-religious others.

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