Showing papers on "Religious organization published in 1984"

Religion in Sociological Perspective

Abstract: PART ONE Introduction to the Sociology of Religion Chapter 1. What Do We Mean by the Term Religion? Chapter 2. A Scientific Perspective on Religion PART TWO The Complexity of Religious Systems: Integration and Conflict Chapter 3. The Role of Religion in Society: Macro Perspectives Chapter 4. Religious Experience, Symbol Systems, and World Views PART THREE Religion in the Lives of Individuals Chapter 5. Becoming and Being Religious Chapter 6. Conversion and Switching PART FOUR Formation and Maintenance of Religious Organizations Chapter 7. Organized Religion: Churches, Sects, and "Cults" Chapter 8. The Denominational Society PART FIVE Religion and Social Inequality Chapter 10. Religion and Racism Chapter 11. Religion, Gender, and Sexuality Chapter 12. Religion, Inequality, and Social Activism PART SIX Social Change and Religious Adaptation Chapter 13. Secularization: Religion in Decline or in Transformation? Chapter 14. Religion Outside the (God) Box Chapter 15. Religion and Globalization EPILOGUE The Sociological Perspective on Religion: A Concluding Comment

Benefits and Costs of Privatized Public Services: Lessons from the Dutch Educational System.

Abstract: The possibility of "privatizing" education and other quasi-public services is under discussion in several countries. By "privatizing" I mean a government policy, such as a voucher or tax credit system, which combines public financing with private production of the service. Advocates of such a system in education claim it would bring the benefits of variety, choice, consumer responsiveness, and competition-induced efficiency to the schools. Opponents fear the supply of private school places might be inelastic and their quality uncertain; moreover, privatization might lead to a deterioration of the public school system and increased social segmentation, with the wealthy elite supplementing the government subsidies and securing a superior education for their own children. To throw light on these issues, this paper examines the experience of the Netherlands, a country which, in effect, has had a voucher system in education for many years. In Holland, education, and most health and social services, are financed by the government but delivered by private nonprofit organizations, often religious ones. This system developed as a response to diverse tastes about education, stemming from basic cultural (religious) differences, in a political setting where no group was in a position to impose its preferred kind on the others. This is consistent with a hypothesis I am testing in a multicountry study: that degree of reliance on private provision of quasi-public goods is positively related to cultural (particularly religious and linguistic) heterogeneity in democratic societies. As will become evident, the Dutch educational system avoids many of the possible pitfalls of privatization. This is due partially to particular mechanisms and regulations the Dutch have adopted to avoid these problems that could conceivably be replicated here and partially to broader

The Influence of Organizational Structure on Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Motivation

Abstract: The article discusses research pertaining to the degree to which organizational structure influences intrinsic motivation in the setting of voluntary religious organization The sample consists of

Respect for Life, Sexual Morality, and Opposition to Abortion

Abstract: matter, which concerns specific rights which people may or may not hold, and indeed concerns the very identity of persons bearing rights. It does not necessarily follow that the understanding of the abortion issue characteristic of political, academic, or religious elites will be replicated at the level of the laity or mass public. Indeed, one would expect that, as one shifts attention to people whose psychological involvement in political or theological matters is less than intense, rationales for opposition to legalized abortion might become cruder, less articulate, and less sophisticated (Converse, 1964:229). Specifically, notions of "right to life," with their attendant theological or moral overtones, might seem rather abstract and remote from the experience of most people. Opposition to abortion may not be conceived in such "ideological" terms by members of the lay public, but might instead be based upon other considerations which seem more immediate and direct. While it is possible to conceive of a number of alternative rationales, a particular set of reasons for opposing abortion appears quite promising. For many people, opposition to abortion may be based on a fairly traditional attitude regarding sexual morality. For most Christian denominations, sex outside of marriage is regarded as inappropriate or sinful behavior. Opposition to abortion may quite legitimately be based on the notion that easily available abortions encourage sexual promiscuity, by removing some of the more serious consequences of premarital or extramarital sex. That is, absent the option of abortion, it is very likely that some people are deterred from sexual activity by the prospect of an unwanted pregnancy. To the extent that this prospect is rendered less serious by the easy availability of an abortion, the potential costs (psychological, structural, or financial) might be greatly reduced. If one regards sex outside of marriage as undesirable or immoral on other grounds, he or she might well conclude that abortion should be prohibited, without ever taking the "humanity" of the fetus into account. The purpose of this study is to assess, in a very preliminary and exploratory way, the relative impact of "right to life" and sexual moralty considerations on mass attitudes toward abortion. In general terms, it is hypothesized that certain groups in the population are very likely to oppose abortion (if they do) on "right to life" grounds, while others are more likely to invoke considerations of sexual morality. More specifically, three different hypotheses will be examined: First, Catholics are more likely to oppose abortion because of considerations of human life than are Protestants. The expectation here is that the Roman Catholic Church is a uniquely effective religious organization in terms of transmitting religious doctrines to the laity. Due to the pyramidal organization of the Church, as well as the existence of an "official" position regarding abortion (McIntosh, 1979:196; Blake, 1971) it might be anticipated that Catholic religious communications will be more homogenous and less ambiguous than those received by a practicing Protestant. The extent of Catholic religious training, as well as the explicitness of moral guidelines for Catholics (Lenski, 1963:301-303; McIntosh, 1979:196) might well be contributing factors in this regard. The organizational structure (broadly conceived) of the Church simply makes it more likely that lay attitudes toward abortion will be more consonant with official Church doctrine than will be the case among Protestants. Second, the importance of "right to life" considerations will vary directly with educational attainment. The precise moment at which human life begins is a highly complex, highly abstract problem. It is to be expected that the relative importance This content downloaded from 157.55.39.53 on Fri, 16 Dec 2016 07:41:28 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

An Examination of Contributions to Support Intercollegiate Athletics

Abstract: Contributions have become an increasingly important source of revenue for college athletic departments. For example, Raiborn [21; 22; 23] found that in 1968-69 athletic departments participating in Division I football received 5 percent of their total revenues via contributions. Over time this figure has increased so that by 1981-82 contributions were the source of 11 percent of the average athletic department's revenues. When the contributions are expressed in dollars, the rapid increase in contributions is highlighted. Raiborn calculated average contributions per athletic department of $116,000 for 1968-69, while the figure had risen to $437,000 by 1981-82. Research by Feldstein [5] and Reece [24] on charitable contributions by individuals has highlighted the importance of developing specific models for groups of recipients such as religious organizations, political parties, and higher education. To date, however, there has been no systematic analysis of the economic determinants of athletic contributions. This paper addresses this void by providing a model of athletic contributions and by subjecting the model to empirical scrutiny. This paper will be presented in three parts. First, a model of athletic contributions will be developed. The next section will consist of a brief discussion of the data and an examination of the empirical results. The final section will highlight the results and suggest future research.

Estate taxation and other determinants of charitable bequests

Abstract: This study offers a new empirical contribution to the charitable bequest literature using data on large Connecticut estates from the 1930s and 1940s. We examine the effects of demographic variables , estote size , and the estate tax rate on charitable bequests. Our findings do not confirm the theoretical prediction that higher estate tax rates encourage larger charitable bequests. Our estimates of the wealth elasticity of charitable bequests are consistent with other findings. A surviving spouse and children diminish the size of charitable bequests , but more distant relatives and the age and sex of the decedent do not. A stated religious preference has a strong positive impact on the size of such bequests. Analyses of four separate categories of charitable bequests yield similar results. Bequests to religious organizations are the most wealth inelastic. We also find that the number of charitable categories given bequests is influenced by the same variables which determine total charitable bequests.

Pancasila as the Sole Foundation

Abstract: The debate in Indonesian religious circles regarding "Pancasila as the azas tunggal [sole foundation or principle]" came to the fore in August 1982 when President Suharto stated that "all social-political forces, particularly the political parties, should accept the state ideology as their azas tunggal." He reassured religious organizations two months later, however, that they would continue to enjoy "rights and an honorable place in the Pancasila-based state," and that Pancasila was neither a religion nor a substitute for religion.

The Power of the Religious Media: Religious Broadcast Use and the Role of Religious Organizations in Public Affairs

Abstract: Using data from a national survey and path analytic techniques, an investigation was made of the relationship between the use of religious broadcasts and the view of the role that religious organizations should take in public affairs. The results of this analysis suggest that thinking that religious organizations should be more active in public affairs leads, to a modest degree, to watching religious television and listening to religious radio. Use of these media howiever, does not appear to influence the view of how active religious organizations should be in public affairs.

Socialist Feminism in Latin America

Abstract: The women's movement around the world takes many stances, including women's rights, feminism, women's research, women's auxilaries of political and religious organizations and socialist feminism. Because of its unique political and economic history, socialist feminism is the dominant emergent stance of the women's movement in Latin America. Brazil, Peru, and the Dominican Republic are examined. Socialist feminism is related to both the international women's movement, political trends within each county and constraints of the current political situation. Women's movements in other Latin American countries are also briefly discussed.

Comparative Education and the Third World: The Nineteenth Century Revisited

Abstract: In the historical review of literature in the field of comparative education, the nineteenth century is described as a period of "borrowing." Western school administrators and political figures like Victor Cousins, Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and Matthew Arnold traveled to other countries within the West to gain ideas on how to improve the educational system in their own countries. The reports written by these and other reformers constitute the recognized literature of comparative education in the nineteenth century.' These reports appeared between the customary markers of the period, namely, the publication in 1817 of Marc-Antoine Jullien de Paris's Plan and Preliminary Views for a Work on Comparative Education and the appearance in 1900 of Michael Sadler's What Can We Learn of Practical Value from the Study of Foreign Systems of Education?2 Unfortunately, this traditional view of comparative education in the nineteenth century neglects the Third World. The selection and transfer by westerners of educational models to the Third World-or what might be termed "selective lending"is excluded. An understanding of nineteenthcentury lending to the Third World would expand the traditional view of the field of comparative education to include the experience of millions of seekers after literacy. It is ironic that much of the current literature in the field of comparative education focuses on education in developing areas, yet the historical antecedents of that educational transfer to the majority of the world's population are overlooked.

The Adolescent Family Life Act and the promotion of religious doctrine.

Abstract: A Catholic hospital in Boston has been teaching Catholic doctrine on contraception and abortion in a sex education program funded under the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA). * Another Catholic organization is using AFLA money to provide sex education to Catholic students and their parents in church facilities in northern Virginia. Two Catholic or Catholic-oriented groups are promoting periodic abstinence, the only means of birth control approved by the Catholic Church, with AFLA funds and are discouraging teenagers from using other methods of contraception, often by presenting a distorted account of the safety of those methods. These grants raise serious questions about whether U.S. tax dollars are being used in violation of the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state, and whether it is appropriate to spend federal money to promote one method of birth control to the exclusion of all others. Yet, they are a logical consequence of the requirements of the AFLA, which was enacted in 1981 to find new ways of addressing the problem of teenage pregnancy by funding programs that "promote self-discipline and other prudent approaches to the problem of adolescent premarital sexual relations . . . [and that] promote adoption as an alternative for adolescent parents."' The law requires grant recipients to involve religious organizations in their programs, and it encourages religious groups to become direct grantees. At the same time, the AFLA prohibits the distribution of funds to groups that provide any abortion-related services, including counseling and referral, or that subcontract with any agency that provides such services. As a result of these requirements, most major religious organizations, as well as most hospitals and family planning clinics and many other health and social service agencies, are not eligible for funding. The law, therefore, mandates religious involvement in the program but, in effect, distributes grants only to certain religious groups-most notably Catholic organizations, whose beliefs on abortion are consistent with the law's terms. Of the eight church-affiliated groups that are direct AFLA grantees, six are Catholic organizations, one is owned by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and one is Brigham Young University, which is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (the Mormon Church). All three churches are strongly opposed to abortion. When the AFLA, popularly known as the chastity bill, was first enacted in 1981, there were no congressional deliberations over the legal and public policy implications of requiring religious involvement in issues such as premarital sex, abortion and birth control that are especially vulnerable to the infusion of faith and religious doctrine. In fact, no formal hearings were held on the legislation in either the House or the Senate, and no vote was taken in either house on the merits of the program. Instead, the AFLA was included in an omnibus bill that funded many government programs. Moreover, despite the danger that the law left the way open for church groups to use AFLA funds for religious purposes, the DHHS Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (OAPP), which administers the law, has never issued guidelines or regulations to ensure that the grants are used strictly for secular purposes. Neither has the OAPP provided standards for its staff for reviewing curricula used in sex education classes and grantee handouts for possible religious content; for determining whether AFLA-funded programs can appropriately be conducted in churches or other religious settings; for deciding whether and to what extent clergy may participate in AFLA programs; or for reviewing the accuracy of information disseminated by grantees on such topics as the safety of the various contraceptive methods. In a lawsuit filed in October 1983 in federal district court in Washington, D.C., the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) contends, on behalf of three United Methodist ministers, a member of the Unitarian Universalist clergy, the American Jewish Congress and several taxpayers, that the AFLA and the manner in which it has been implemented violate the First Amendment's p ohibition against the establishment of religion. The plaintiffs maintain that by requiring grantees to involve religious organizations in their projects and by encouraging religious groups to become direct grantees, the law unconstitutionally "promotes and subsidizes religion and authorizes the use of religious indoctrination as a means of opposing premarital sex, abortion and birth control for teenagers. "2 The plaintiffs also argue that the law favors certain religious groups over others that hold beliefs and values that conflict with the AFLA, most notably on abortion. They further assert that some AFLA grants to religious institutions involve the use of federal money to promote religious doctrine on abortion and birth control and constitute direct aid to parochial schools or religious institutions, which the ACLU contends is unconstitutional. The lawsuit is not expected to be decided at the district court level for several months, and may ultimately reach the Supreme Court.

Social linkages and organizational commitment in voluntary organizations

Abstract: A mail survey of 519 Southern Baptists tested the prepotency of social linkages of predicting commitment in voluntary organizations. The results of the study indicated that instrumentality theory was a weak predictor of organizational commitment, while results were notably more consistent with cohesion theory. The results are discussed and implications for theoretical and empirical research are addressed.

“Numbering Israel”: The U.S. Census and Religious Organizations

Abstract: This study is concerned with the availability of data on religion in the United States and specifically with data included in US censuses The availability of such data in nineteenth- and twentieth-century censuses is first described and the accuracy of these data is considered Finally the author summarizes how these data have been used in previous sociological research (ANNOTATION)

Moral Education in Nova Scotia, 1880-1920

Abstract: The promotion of morality has always been regarded as a function of the school throughout the history of education in Nova Scotia. As had been the case in Europe earlier, the school shared with the family and the churches responsibility for moral formation. The majority of early school foundations owed their establishment to religious organizations whose interest in moral education was paramount. Even with the rise of the common school movement, against a backdrop of deep religious division in the province, pioneers like Alexander Forrester, first principal of Nova Scotia's Normal College, argued in 1867 for moral instruction on broadly but specifically Christian lines as the central aim of public education.1 By the end of the 19th century, however, concern for the promotion of moral and ethical instruction began to intensify. As society became industrialized and urbanized, traditional guarantors of morality and social stability — family, church, and small community — saw their effectiveness in that role steadily eroded. The churches found it difficult to adjust to political and economic changes of the age. The Roman Catholic Church, stubbornly resisting compromise with modernism, formulated the clearest response to liberal democracy, industrial capitalism, and Darwinian science, a response which was largely negative. Most Protestant denominations were divided during this period between those who sought to reinterpret the Christian message in changed surroundings and those of a more fundamentalist stripe.2 Throughout the Western world, men found themselves, in the words of Dutch historian Jan Romein, "before the dark gate of utter uncertainty"3 in a world in which scientific discovery and social change had put traditional verities under attack. It is not surprising, then, that conventionally religious persons should seek to reinforce the moral order through the schools. At the same time, even those who professed adherence to no creed were no less concerned about what appeared to be a decline in personal and public morality and were equally vocal in demanding that schools place renewed emphasis on the teaching of ethics and morality.4 There were no clear battle-lines between "secular" and "Christian" morality,

Church Attendance at Ripon in 1891: A Contemporary Assessment

Abstract: THERELIGIOUS CENSUSheld in 1851was politically controversial and as an official exercise it was not repeated except on a more limited scale in Ireland.1 Nevertheless other enumerators have tackled the same problem, and in 1881 for example a number of local newspapers conducted surveys in their own areas. Religious organizations have also been collecting statistics since various dates, mainly of their own membership and for their own domestic purposes, and because their respective data tend to spring from different bases, correlation between them is difficult. There are, of course, inherent difficulties as well in any attempt to quantify so elusive a concept as religious belief on the basis of the evidence of attendance at public worship. Nevertheless scholars have not been deterred from quantification in their study of the historical sociology of religion though it has been more characteristic of modern French research than of English despite the recently published computations by Dr Currie and his colleagues, and investigations by Hugh McLeod and others.2 Post-1851 evidence is not as plentiful as might be desired and so the discovery of even the most localized of contemporary exercises in this field provides a welcome contribution towards filling the gaps in modern knowledge of later nineteenth-century religious practice. One such contemporary assessment is preserved amongst the archives of the Dean and Chapter of Ripon, now deposited in the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds. 3This brief document records 'an estimate of attendance at public worship' at Ripon on Sundays, made at a meeting of the Dean of Ripon, W. R. Fremantle, with the ministers of all denominations from the town on Saturday, 7 February 1891. This would seem to be an uncommon type of document and whilst it poses a number of problems, it is nevertheless worth bringing to light. No exaggerated claims will be made for it, however, or for Ripon, a West Riding market town with a