The new year is always a time for lists, all kinds of lists. So I decided to try a new list, and one that hopefully helps readers learn what sociology profs do with all these charts, graphs and theories when they don’t teach it or blog on it. I’m teaching a graduate seminar class on how to publish in sociology, a kind of reverse engineering of the basic “product” that academic sociologists are known for: the research article. To that... Read more
One of my favorite jokes goes like this: Two economists are looking at a fancy car. One economist says “I’ve always wanted to buy that kind of car.” The other economist says “no you haven’t.” The point being that if we don’t do something that we say we want to do, sometimes we really don’t want to do it. (Not always, of course). I’ve been thinking about the concept of Mark Regnerus’ blog post earlier this week that mentioned how... Read more
I read with great interest my colleague Jerry Park’s recent blog about Asian-American religion and depression. I am familiar with the database used, Add Health, and with the broader literature on religion and depression. Given my knowledge, I would caution against drawing strong conclusions from this study Asian-Americans youth who are religious are more depressed. First, as Park mentions, Christian religions generally require regular participation but Buddhist, Confucian and other Asian religions do not. For this reason, most studies of... Read more
The modal image of Christianity in America is face-to-face meetings predominately attended by families. These meetings can be weekend services, prayer meetings or small groups, but they involve interacting with other people in person. Also, there are often a lot of families and married couples at these meetings; in fact, marriage and child-bearing are occasions that prompt many people to turn to faith. With this in mind, two societal trends worth watching regard how we communicate and how we form... Read more
I’m not sure if it’s age or what, but I’ve been thinking more frequently about my father lately. He died on the morning of November 23, 1999 from metastasized melanoma, at the age of 56. I was 28. He was something of an old soul. He even looked older than his age. What I’ve been drawn toward lately is thinking about where he was and what he was doing and what he seemed like to me when he was my... Read more
Faith Communities Today, a program out of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, has recently released their latest FACTS report. It comprehensively examines a simple but vitally important question: Which congregations are growing? So, let’s see you know the answers to these questions…. which churches are the most likely to be growing? – Those in rural areas, suburbs, or downtowns? – Those in the South or elsewhere? – Predominately white or non-white? – Conservative protestants or mainline congregations? – Those... Read more
In the Christmas season when lots of joy and cheer abound, we know that this sentiment is not always shared by those around us. I’m not talking about those who don’t believe in Santa or those who don’t believe in Jesus. I’m talking about those among us who fight the noonday demon called depression. A lot of us who skim this blog already know this: suicide attempts and depression run higher in these winter months and a number of... Read more
I would like to pose some questions about emotions in church. What should be the emotions expressed from the pew? From the pulpit? How might the church’s emotion-rules hurt it’s people and hinder its mission? Here are my thoughts: In most churches there are clearly defined implicit rules about which few emotions are appropriate to express. For the church goer, the modal expression should be polite interest, and the face should show either a neutral expression or, even better, a... Read more
It’s either really cool or social statistics run amok (or both), but here is a social network map of the relationships in the New Testament. It’s done by the folks at the English Standard Version Bible. Obviously the New Testament is not a sociometric survey, so what we learn here is the Bible’s description of relationships. So, for all we know Luke and Titus were drinking buddies. Still, it’s a useful description of this aspect of the New Testament. I... Read more
Okay, this maybe the coolest map I’ve seen of the spread of Christianity worldwide. From the Pew Center, it compares the distribution of Christianity today versus a century ago, and it does with a spatial-weighted map. While the percentage of the world’s population that is Christian has dropped a bit (35% to 32%), the big change is in where Christians live. In the map, the larger the country, the more Christians live in it. Look what’s happened to Africa and... Read more
Black, White and Gray
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