Religious giving in the united states

Research on religious giving in the United States contains several important lessons. Denominations differ immensely in their giving levels, with conservative Protestants giving the most, liberal Protestants giving at moderate levels, and Catholics giving the least. Personal religious commitments and the level of one's disposable income are the main determinants, but, in addition, interpersonal factors produce a strong skew in the amounts given. Annual pledging and deliberate planning of giving have clear effects.     

Southeast Asia Of The Ninth To Fourteenth Centuries

This review essay of Violence and Vengeance engages with Duncan's view that religious distinctions on their own are rarely the cause of violence, although they may subsequently form its raison d'etre. The review examines how religion assumes a very public space in various Indonesian societies but how the public profession of distinctive religious positions need not stir hostility. However, recent assertions of religious purity and correctness are putting new pressures on community relations, and can be seen as contributing to the severe expressions of violence in North Maluku studied by Duncan. The review questions his call for a truth commission as a necessary precursor to reconciliation, suggesting it may disrupt the strong progress already made towards peace. Instead, it calls for a closer analysis of elite and state roles in provoking or countenancing communal violence.     

Family Welfare Effort,Total Fertility,and In Vitro Fertilization: Explaining the Israeli Anomaly

The theory of family welfare effort is a leading macro‐sociological explanation of variation in human fertility. It holds that states which provide universally available, inexpensive, high‐quality day care, generous parental leave, and flexible work schedules lower the opportunity cost of motherhood. They thus enable women, especially those in lower socioeconomic strata, to have the number of babies they want. A considerable body of research supports this theory. However, it is based almost exclusively on analyses of Western European and North American countries. This paper examines the Israeli case because Israel's total fertility rate is anomalously high given its family welfare effort. Based on a review of the relevant literature and a reanalysis of data from various published sources, it explains the country's unusually high total fertility rate as the product of (1) religious and nationalistic sentiment that is heightened by the Jewish population's perception of a demographic threat in the form of a burgeoning Palestinian population and (2) the state's resulting support for pro‐natal policies, including the world's most extensive in vitro fertilization (IVF) system. The paper also suggests that Israel's IVF policy may not be in harmony with the interests of many women insofar as even women with an extremely low likelihood of becoming pregnant are encouraged to undergo the often lengthy, emotionally and physically painful, and risky process of IVF.     

Men,Resources, and Family Living: The Determinants of Union and Parental Status in the United States and Sweden

Household fatherhood (living with a partner and her children) is increasingly common, which also increases the types of family situations men can choose. This paper examines factors distinguishing men's partnership and parental statuses in the United States and Sweden. These countries differ in state support to families. Unlike the United States, in Sweden the presence of a man in a relationship with a woman with children has little effect on receipt of alternative forms of income support and health insurance, lowering the cost of men's membership in families. We examine how resources (earned income and education) affect men's family relationships in these two countries.     

Has social mobility in Britain decreased? Reconciling divergent findings on income and class mobility

Social mobility has become a topic of central political concern. In political and also media circles it is widely believed that in Britain today mobility is in decline. However, this belief appears to be based on a single piece of research by economists that is in fact concerned with intergenerational income mobility: specifically, with the relation between family income and children's later earnings. Research by sociologists using the same data sources – the British birth cohort studies of 1958 and 1970 – but focusing on intergenerational class mobility does not reveal a decline either in total mobility rates or in underlying relative rates. The paper investigates these divergent findings. We show that they do not result from the use of different subsets of the data or of different analytical techniques. Instead, given the more stable and generally less fluid class mobility regime, it is the high level of income mobility of the 1958 cohort, rather than the lower level of the 1970 cohort, that is chiefly in need of explanation. Further analyses – including ones of the relative influence of parental class and of family income on children's educational attainment – suggest that the economists' finding of declining mobility between the two cohorts may stem, in part at least, from the fact that the family income variable for the 1958 cohort provides a less adequate measure of ‘permanent income’ than does that for the 1970 cohort. But, in any event, it would appear that the class mobility regime more fully captures the continuity in economic advantage and disadvantage that persists across generations.     

Diversity,Macrosociology, and Religious Belonging: Using Mixed-Level Models in Examining Spatial Variation and the Closed Community Thesis

Abstract

In the past decade, a number of researchers have been interested in both the predictors and causal effects of civic involvement (Blanchard 2007; Funk 1998; Putnam 1993; Putnam 2000; Tolbert, Lyson, and Irwin 1998). Considerable attention has been paid to the effect that religious involvement has on the development of closed and tight-knit communities (Blanchard 2007; Iannaconne 1988, 1994; Porter and Brown 2008; Putnam 1993; Wuthnow 2002). The diversity of friendships gives us a good proxy for the degree of closeness created by existing in-group dynamics formed as a consequence of closed social communities. Data from the 2000 Social Capital Benchmark Survey, concerning individuals from 41 localities across the United States, was used in this analysis (Roper 2000). Furthermore, local-level variables concerning the rate of religious adherence were introduced as a way of better understanding potential multilevel effects. My findings support a number of these, showing that religious group membership significantly lowers an individual's diversity of friendships when compared to the effect of belonging to other groups.     

Communication in Religious Lobbying: Making Meaning,Creating Power

This article examines influence-building tactics used in the political discourses of religious groups born from social movements. It applies Hofrenning's (1995) 3 strategies (symbolic, language, and coalition building) to an organizational publication. The work traces the Christian Coalition stances on issues of separation of church and state between 1992 and 1996 by content analyzing Christian American, the group's official publication. This study concludes that this organization of religious conservatives used varying issue emphases, contexts, and alliances to mobilize followers. It gravitated toward a political rather than religious agenda and moved toward a more secularly delivered message over time. This article also indicates that groups rooted in social movements may be able to take places within the political superstructure relatively quickly and that Hofrenning's list is useful for tracking these transitions.     

The Estimation of the South Korean Government's Diplomacy for Its Opposing Public North Korea

Based on the influence of the contingency factors of inner organizational and external situational factors, contingency theory of accommodation provides a good explanation for the real public relations practices. A recent series of experimental studies supports the idea that the theory is also applicable in the public's estimation pattern regarding an organization's public relations practices. This survey study is theoretically important when examining and sorting out significant factors in the real population of a notable public diplomacy domain. That is, this research examines how the South Korean people perceive the contingency factors and how people estimate the South Korean government's stance toward its opposing public, North Korea. The regression model of perceived contingency factors and stance estimation was generalizable in the population of this study (R ² = .279). The most influential perceptual predictors in the model include: the North Korean leader's preference for the South Korean president, the relative power of South Korea, the level of commitment of North Korea, the South Korean president's preference for the North Korean leader, the US government's support for the South Korean policy toward North Korea, the South Korean government's certainty to deal with the North Korean military threat, situational difficulties, the South Korean government's knowledge and skill to deal with the threat, the situational duration of threat, and the South Korean president's relation-oriented leadership. Finally, this study discussed practical implications for the government practitioners.     

The Nonprofit Sector and State Governments: Public Policy Issues Facing Nonprofits in North Carolina and Other States

The challenges facing nonprofits in North Carolina and most states include devolution and ripple effects at the state level from federal budget cutbacks, government efforts to tax or further regulate nonprofits, scandals involving a few organizations or their leaders, and efforts to limit nonprofits' right to lobby and advocate for their causes. But the future also holds a number of opportunities for nonprofits, including the increased clout of nonprofits acting together as a sector; partnership initiatives with nonprofits by North Carolina's governor and chief executives in other states, legislative measures to increase charitable giving and reduce red tape, state-level summits following up on the president's push for increased volunteerism, and a reservoir of public trust in nonprofits. North Carolina's experience may predict the future dangers and opportunities in other states.     

Ethnocultural cleavages and the growth of church membership in the United States, 1860–1930

Recent research on the expansion of overall church membership in the United States has led to conflicting conclusions as to whether religious diversity or monopoly increases participation. This investigation helps resolve the debate by distinguishing among different religious traditions. It is hypothesized that differences in participation can be traced to racial, ethnic, and doctrinal divisions, and moreover, that these divisions also provide the contingent conditions under which competition or monopoly effects operate. Using pooled cross-sectional time series, comparisons center on Catholics, Baptists, and Mainline denominations. Separate analyses are presented for white and black Baptists, and for the Northern Baptist Convention that emerged in the early 20th century as a relatively liberal Baptist denomination. The results suggest that ecumenical and liberal religious traditions did accompany religious diversity, but membership in such churches grew very slowly. In contrast, groups that faced discrimination as well as those that shielded themselves from progressive currents of modernism sustained high rates of growth. Their monopoly situations are evident in the low religious diversity of counties in which they grew (as well as by low ethnic or racial diversity) and by their increasing spatial concentration over time.A version of this paper was presented at the 1992 American Sociological Association meetings.     

A theory of the organization of state and local government employees

Expansion of public employee labor organizations has brought considerable change in a sector previously considered outside the domain of the trade union movement. A model to explain this phenomenon among state and local government employees is developed and tested using data from the1977 Census of Governments. The percentage of employees organized is determined by a number of factors which affect the costs and benefits of membership and may be influenced by the level of employees’ earnings. Empirical evidence indicates that a higher level of organization is a product of government size, legal provisions, unionization in the private sector, and, in some government functions, the unemployment rate, and level of income.     

Religion Imagined: The Conceptual Substructures of American Religious Understandings

Sociologists have increasingly drawn on the cognitive sciences to better theorize how culture works. While this shift has improved understandings of the distinct qualities of practical and discursive modes of cognition, limited consideration has been given to the cognitive structures that scaffold cultural understandings. This article theorizes the influence of “image schemas” in structuring cultural understandings beneath the level of conscious awareness. After outlining how image schemas can be identified in interviews, I reconstruct how 50 religious Americans unconsciously “imagine” religion's role in their lives. Focusing on the implicit rather than respondents' explicit discourse, I identify five image schemas that structure Americans' religious understandings. Although respondents' understandings often appear incoherent and inconsistent at the level of explicit discourse, I show that they are coherent and consistent at the level of implicit image schemas. I then use factor analysis to identify patterns in these implicit understandings across social divisions. I conclude by discussing the promise of image schema analysis for improving studies of religion and other areas, as well as for theorizing how culture works.     

Legalization of lotteries in the 1980s

The decade of the 1980s has witnessed an explosion in legalized gambling. Most dramatic has been the growth of state-sponsored lotteries. The spread of these state-operated lotteries is the result of pressure for more revenues for state operating costs. Lotteries are viewed as a means of raising these revenues: In 1987, state-operated lotteries grossed over $12 billion in sales. Eight states had sales exceeding $1 billion (New York Times, 1988). Clearly, state lotteries have become big business. The purpose of this article is to describe the spread of lotteries in the 1980s and to note the minimal attention given to compulsive gambling in debates on lotteries.Mr. Braidfoot is General Counsel for the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is the author ofGambling: The Deadly Game.     

The Impact of Religious Homogeneity on the Rate of Divorce in the United States

This study extends the understanding of the relationship between religious homogeneity, that is, the extent to which formal religious groups are concentrated at the county level, and the rate of persons currently divorced in those counties. Linking the research question to Durkheimian precepts of religion as an integrative force in social life, the essential question is, “At the county level, does the rate of currently divorced vary inversely with more concentrated affiliation with formal religious organizations?” We investigate this relationship using data from the 1990 U.S. Census and from the Glenmary Research Center that encompasses 621 counties in the U.S., that is, a 20 percent random sample of counties from each state. As hypothesized, the divorced rate is inversely related to religious homogeneity, even after controlling for a series of factors that have been shown to be correlated with divorce in other studies.     

Socioeconomic Deprivation and Religious Salience: A Cognitive Behavioral Approach

Past research is consistent with the idea that socioeconomic deprivation leads individuals to be more religious in certain ways. The related perspectives of exchange theory and cognitive behaviorism imply that such deprivation also leads people to place more importance on religion a virtually unexplored issue. This study examines the effects of education, occupational prestige and income on religious salience" among residents of the Raleigh, North Carolina, metropolitan area Oc cupational prestige and among respondents who were not church members education are found to have the hypothesized negative effects on salience. However, income has no effects when education and occupation are controlled, and an argument by Rodney Stark that these effects would hold true only for church members is contradicted.     

Pluriactivity in the Moshav:: family farming in Israel

In the past several years, pluriactivity has become quite widespread among moshav farming households, especially those located within Metropolitan Tel Aviv's rural fringe. Agricultural income has been on the decline and other sources of income have appeared. This paper has a threefold aim: To identify major patterns of income sources among Moshav's households; to explain the underlying causes for choosing pluriactivity as an income-producing strategy; and to explain the reasons for the specific choice of pluriactivity patterns adopted.An analysis of the activities of moshavim¹ located in the Sharon Region indicates that the further the moshav from the metropolitan area, the greater the role of agriculture in total family income. Within a pluriactivity strategy, the main additional sources of income are wage employment and small business activity, carried out either on or off the moshav. The main factors stimulating the increase in pluriactivity are the decline in agricultural income and the desire to take advantage of vocational training. This trend is supported by other factors, such as the availability of premises for alternative uses as well as the ease of operating a business from the home.The divergence in pluriactivity patterns may indicate that the frequency of mixing agriculture with other income sources may be a temporary option adopted by households for which agriculture has been a mainstay. Those households may shift away from agriculture in the short or mid-term. We would argue that at present, for the majority of those no longer devoted solely to agriculture, pluriactivity is also aimed at helping to sustain agricultural activity. In such cases, farmers utilise the resources acquired from non-agricultural employment for investment in agriculture, including the upgrading of equipment and other assets.     

Unbuckling the Bible Belt: A State-Level Analysis of Religious Factors and Google Searches for Porn

While the link between individual religious characteristics and pornography consumption is well established, relatively little research has considered how the wider religious context may influence pornography use. Exceptions in the literature to date have relied on relatively broad, subjective measures of religious commitment, largely ignoring issues of religious belonging, belief, or practice. This study moves the conversation forward by examining how a variety of state-level religious factors predict Google searches for the term porn, net of relevant sociodemog raphic and ideological controls. Our multivariate findings indicate that higher percentages of Evangelical Protestants, theists, and biblical literalists in a state predict higher frequencies of searching for porn, as do higher church attendance rates. Conversely, higher percentages of religiously unaffiliated persons in a state predict lower frequencies of searching for porn. Higher percentages of total religious adherents, Catholics, or mainline Protestants in a state are unrelated to searching for porn with controls in place. Contrary to recent research, our analyses also show that higher percentages of political conservatives in a state predicted lower frequencies of porn searches. Our findings support theories that more salient, traditional religious influences in a state may influence residents—whether religious or not—toward more covert sexual experiences.     

Black and White Families: Factors Affecting the Wife's Contribution to the Family Income Where the Husband's Income Is Low to Moderate*

The economic role of the black wife in contrast to her husband's weak economic position is a key assumption in Moynihan's thesis of a black matriarchy. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of women, aged 30 to 44, in 1967, this paper examines the factors affecting the wife's contribution to the family income for both black and white families where the husband's income is below the median of all male-headed families. The results suggest that black wives and white wives respond similarly with respect to their overall contribution, the demand for female labor, and the effect of children. There is no support, moreover, for Moynihan's assumption that black wives are compensating for their husband's weak economic position. It appears, however, that the definition of the provider may differ among black families and white families.     

North Korea's Militant Nationalism and People's Everyday Lives: Past and Present

North Korea's anti‐American state power has operated in individuals' everyday practices by focusing on its post‐war militant nationalism. Existing studies have neglected an aspect of North Korea's nationalist power that has been neither necessarily top‐down nor violent, but rather productive and diffusive in people's everyday lives. While the regime's anti‐American mobilization has come from above, people's politics of hatred, patriotism, and emotion have been reproduced from below. Along this line, I examine the historical and social changes in North Korea's militant nationalism and people's ways of life through a comparison between two periods: from the 1950s through the 1980s and from the 1990s through the present. I focus on how the state's anti‐American power was legitimated by people's solid micro‐fascism from the 1950s through the 1980s, and how it has been contested and recreated through both change and persistence in people's micro‐fascism from the 1990s through the present.     

Spiritual Gatekeepers: Time and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults

This article addresses the process of initiation into the Catholic Church by analyzing in‐depth interviews with parish‐based professional initiation coordinators. The formal title given to this process of initiation by the Church since Vatican II is the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). Since the RCIA's promulgation, the Church has hired a host of lay and religious professionals to coordinate its implementation at the parish level. Our analysis focuses on the temporal sequencing and the problem of duration of initiation. The data show that both city and suburban coordinators adapted the Church's mandated length of time for initiation in different ways as they negotiated covenantal and contractual social relations among RCIA participants.