If you read a textbook-style account of conflicts centering around the Protestant Reformation(s), it'll probably focus on theological disputes: justification by faith, the lay chalice, baptism, the meaning of "hoc est corpus meum," predestination... kind of thing.

But a lot of the most persuasive work – at least IMHO – on religious conflicts in the 16th and 17th cautions against focusing too much on "ideational content." https://t.co/j1nkhjvqTE
There are a variety of pitfalls here. One of them is that most of the people fighting over religion probably didn't to that point by carefully weighing the finer points of theological disputes. Dynamics of community, identity, and ritual probably played a more important role.
I've been thinking about this as we approach election day. American politics scholars understand very well that, for most Americans, partisanship drives ideology. Scholars of ethnic politics see familiar patterns in U.S. political polarization (cc @sstroschein2).
Political movements embrace conversion (!!) narratives as validations of their beliefs, and the converted stress ideas and epiphanies. But it doesn't take much poking around to see the crucial role if identity, belonging, and social affirmation.
This is a common refrain in studies about "redpilling" into IDW and alt-ideologies.

But it's also true of more 'mainstream' conversions.
On Twitter, you can watch this unfold in real time – and with prominent figures – as departure from orthodoxies meets with escalating attacks from the in-group and kudos from the out-group.
Indeed, the way that groups police their boundaries can be a double-edged sword. Especially if stigmas begin to erode.
Why do you think conservatives have sunk *so* much effort into hashtags, messaging, and spotlighting designed to imply an exodus of specific subgroups from the Democratic coalition?
A lot of liberal commentary (sometimes it me) dismisses this activity as targeted almost exclusively at wavering whites. But after years of these kinds of appeals, it does seem like the social stigma that's kept some conservative minorities in the Democratic fold is wavering.
Sorry, that was a bit of tangent.

The tl;dr community, identity, social affirmation, & ritual matter for all of our politics. It's important to keep this in mind as we come to climax one of the few remaining civic rituals that, in theory, binds all Americans together.
Welp. The number of typos in that thread strongly suggests I need another dose of my ADHD medicine. 🤦‍♂️

More from Society

Brief thread to debunk the repeated claims we hear about transmission not happening 'within school walls', infection in school children being 'a reflection of infection from the community', and 'primary school children less likely to get infected and contribute to transmission'.

I've heard a lot of scientists claim these three - including most recently the chief advisor to the CDC, where the claim that most transmission doesn't happen within the walls of schools. There is strong evidence to rebut this claim. Let's look at


Let's look at the trends of infection in different age groups in England first- as reported by the ONS. Being a random survey of infection in the community, this doesn't suffer from the biases of symptom-based testing, particularly important in children who are often asymptomatic

A few things to note:
1. The infection rates among primary & secondary school children closely follow school openings, closures & levels of attendance. E.g. We see a dip in infections following Oct half-term, followed by a rise after school reopening.


We see steep drops in both primary & secondary school groups after end of term (18th December), but these drops plateau out in primary school children, where attendance has been >20% after re-opening in January (by contrast with 2ndary schools where this is ~5%).

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