Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Religion: My First Research Love
How do religious groups reflect or alter the broader culture in which they are situated? How do social dynamics play out within and between religious groups? How does one's religious social identity interact with other salient social identities? These research question have fascinated me for nearly 10 years.
It started with a qualitative research methods class at a university with a number of well-known campus ministry organizations. I had observed the social impact of ministry work on campus - older students befriending younger students in the hopes of bringing them into their ministry work, friend groups suddenly changing when someone chose to attend a different ministry organization. For my semester-long research project, I chose to interview leaders of campus ministries to learn about their own religious experiences and what motivated them to work specifically with college-age students. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found that when all of the interviewed leaders were in high school or college, they all had an influential person who had a dramatic impact on their spiritual life. In analyzing the interview transcripts, I distilled three major takeaways regarding the importance of this time period: 1) exploring alternatives to one's religious upbringing, often for the first time, 2) establishing or abandoning religious habits that are likely to last into adulthood, and 3) the search for social identities that would help one feel a sense of belonging on a new campus. With this last piece, I was hooked.
In my junior year, I was looking for a research-focused study abroad program. I came across a program based in Kathmandu, Nepal that focused on Himalayan peoples, including Tibetans living in exile. How did Tibetan culture in exile (including religious practices and beliefs) adapt to, or resist, the influence of other cultures? I was fascinated, so I took the plunge and flew halfway around the world to find out. During the semester, I learned from one of our teachers that a group of Tibetan Buddhist nuns, many of whom had walked across the Himalayas to escape religious persecution in Tibet, had successfully petitioned to gain access to higher levels of religious certification. I was so fortunate to be able to travel to Dharamsala, India to research this historic change and interview some of the nuns themselves (see the section below for a link to the report). With this project, I became interested in the gender and political power dynamics of religious groups, and this research interest led me into a PhD program in Sociology of Religion at the University of Notre Dame.
At ND, I took numerous courses on statistical modeling, social psychology, and the influence of global politics on individual religiosity and organized religion. My master's thesis, linked below, drew upon all of these subjects.
Using multilevel modeling techniques to run multivariate analyses on merged cross-national datasets, this graduate thesis examines how individual-level religiosity interacts with country-level contextual factors to influence personal and political social distance from members of religious out-groups.
Recommended Citation
LeClear, M. (2017). Explaining variation in social distance from religious out-groups : a cross-national study of Muslims in minority contexts. University of Notre Dame.
Bhikshunis and Breaking Barriers: The Changing Status of Women in Monastic Life
This qualitative research project focuses on changes in ideology and policy regarding the status of women in Tibetan Buddhist monastic life, represented by the first cohort of Tibetan nuns to sit for the geshema examination in May 2013. Interviews were conducted in April 2013 with members of this cohort, the co-directors of the Tibetan Nuns Project, and an official with the Department of Religion and Culture of the Central Tibetan Administration (Tibetan government-in-exile).
Recommended Citation
LeClear, McKenna, "Bhikshunis and Breaking Barriers: The Changing Status of Women in Monastic Life" (2013). Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection. 1565. https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/isp_collection/1565