Theses/Dissertations - Sociology
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/2104/4797
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Browsing Theses/Dissertations - Sociology by Subject "Church growth."
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Item Congregational growth, closure, identity, and diversity.(2010-06-23T12:32:57Z) Maier, Jared E.; Dougherty, Kevin D.; Sociology.; Baylor University. Dept. of Sociology.Despite stories of secularization in America, congregations still possess power as one of America's most prolific social organizations. Their power can be seen by the fact that congregations receive the highest proportion of philanthropic donations of any social institution (Hoge, Zech, McNamara, and Donahue 1996), and are the greatest outlet of voluntarism in the United States (Putnam 2000). This dissertation explores four central issues pertaining to congregations: growth, closure, identity, and diversity. Heterogeneity by age is related to growth in American congregations, while homogeneity by belief is related to congregational growth in Evangelical congregations. Age liabilities of newness and oldness are associated with closure in congregations that have a free-church tradition. Beliefs stand out above denominational affiliation and self-identification in terms of identifying who is Evangelical. Finally, there is potential of racially diverse congregations to assist in the changing of attitudes and actions toward people of a different race.Item Salience and congregational growth : revisiting the strictness thesis.(2013-09-16) Ferguson, Todd W.; Dougherty, Kevin D.; Sociology.; Baylor University. Dept. of Sociology.Since Kelley’s (1972) Why Conservative Churches Are Growing, scholars have examined the relationship between congregational strictness and growth. This paper seeks to further develop the strict church thesis by suggesting that strictness leads to growth when it addresses salient issues. Using binary logistic regression to analyze data from the 2000 Faith Communities Today survey, I find that, while overall strictness continues to be positively associated with congregational growth, only prohibitions that are salient within a religious tradition have an impact on congregational growth. Therefore, this study supports a more nuanced understanding of strictness. Strictness does not always lead to congregational growth. Instead, growth is contingent upon an issue’s salience.