Religion Fisher, E. (2015). Public philology: text criticism and the sectarianization of Hinduism in early modern south India. South Asian History and Culture, 6(1), 50-69.

This study examines the sectarianism of Hindus in South India (Tamil) to explain the dramatic polarization among religious groups in Tamil Nadu over the past few centuries. The study shows that this sectarianism developed as a result of public philologists dismissing orthodoxy and religions standards in favor of their own personal form of religious meaning, style and form.

Mundey, P. (2017). Salvation with a smile: Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church and American Christianity. Review of Religious Research, 59(1), 101-103.

This article reviews a work by Philip Luke Sinitiere which examines the smiling preacher Joel Osteen and his brand of American Protestantism. It shows how this unique style of religion appeals to Americans and how the megachurch represents a type of Manifest Destiny in the religious world of Protestant Christianity.

Park, K. (2015). Fifty Years of Reaction and Reform: American Catholicism and the Second Vatican Council. American Studies, 54(2), 33-43.

This study examines the nature and impact of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) on the Roman Catholic Church. It shows how different the Council was from others in the past and how it deviated from historical Church teachings and doctrines in numerous ways. The end result of the Council was a radical transformation of the Catholic Church, one that had serious affects on the Church throughout the world, too.

Politics

Gilens, M., & Page, B. I. (2014). Testing theories of American politics: Elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspectives on politics, 12(3), 564-581.

The researchers in this study perform multivariate analysis of key variables of nearly 2000 policy issues in America to find that the political system in the U.S. is best described as an oligarchy in which the interests of elite business groups are best represented in U.S. government policy while the interests of “average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence” (p. 564). Thus, while the American government may purport to have a democratic political system, the evidence of this study does not...

(2015). Zionism, Judaism and the State of the Jews. Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics, and Culture, 20(4/1), 75-82.
This article describes the foundations of the Israeli-Zionist state and political system. While there is an increasing movement towards promoting the Jewish religion in the Israeli government, creating something resembling a theocracy, the origins of Israel were rooted in secular Zionism—i.e., political Judaism. Israel’s political system was started as “an alternative to religious identity” and instead as a state that gave refuge to people who identified as ethnic Jews. The article describes how the father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl declared that a theocracy was out of the question in Israel, that instead the state should be secular in its governance, while particularly attuned to the needs of the Jewish people. This odd push and pull between ethnic Judaism, political Judaism, and religious Judaism has complicated affairs in Israel as the country, its leaders, and its populace struggle to understand their identity and the type of government they wish to have in the 21st century. Some feel it should be theocratic as Judaism is what defines the people, their heritage, and their place; but others feel that the state should retain its commitment to secularity and keep Church and State separate. The impossibility of this separation is becoming clearer day by day.

Zajcev, V. A., Tat'yana, M. P., Podgornyj, V. I., Shabalina, E. I., & Potapov, V. J. (2017). Moscow Autocracy of XVI-XVII Centuries: Eastern ‘’Despotism’’or an Early Modern European Monarchy?. Journal of History Culture and Art Research, 6(3), 1190-1198.

This article examines issues related to the Russian political system in the 21st century and whether it is a modern European monarchy in disguise or rather representative of Eastern despotism. The researchers find that the Russian political system bears more in common with the Western European political system than it differs.

Economics

Hilbert, R. E., & Wright, C. (2017). The command economy as an adaptive structure. Journal of Classical Sociology, 17(3), 238-251.

This study examines the “problem of order” in human societies by…