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When U.S. respondents to soda surveys are asked to report their attendance at religious services, approximately 40% of Protestants and 50% of Catholics claim to attend church in any given week. These survey findings have been widely disseminated. They are prominently and broadly cited though out scholarly, popular and textbook writing on American religion. Such extensive interest makes it all the more important to investigate whether these rates give a true or a distorted picture of religious practice in the United States. A recent paper has shaken confidence in the self-reported church attendance rates. Using counts of actual attendees at religious services rather than self-reports, the study has argued that the true weekly U.S. church attendance rate is approximately half the rate implied by the self-reports. The line of investigation is continued by collecting count-based church attendance data from an additional 31 Catholic dioceses. Including 17 dioceses reported on in the original paper, one is able to calculate count-based church attendance rates in 48 U.S. Catholic dioceses.

We examine how local religions influence derivative usage in the hedge fund industry. Measuring religiosity by the ratio of religious adherents in the county of a U.S. hedge fund headquarters, we find that religiosity is negatively related to the probability of hedge funds using derivatives for speculative purposes. In contrast, funds in regions with higher ratios of Catholics to Protestants are more likely to engage in speculation‐based trading of derivatives. Finally, we show that the effects of local religion are more pronounced if the hedge fund size is small. Overall, our study highlights the significant role of local religion in shaping the purpose of hedge fund derivative usage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of socio-economic achievement is elaborated through an analysis of data from eight NORC surveys, combined to create a sample of members of six religio-ethnic groups. Correlational analysis indicates findings similar to earlier studies. Using Methodists as the comparison group, Scheffe tests indicate that Jews differ in education, occupational achievement and income, Episcopalians in occupational prestige, and Baptists in education and income, but no significant differentials existed for Irish and Italian Catholics. Further analysis using decomposition suggests that traditional Jewish emphasis on education is an important factor in explaining these differences, but that the factors included in the model explain only a small part of the Baptist and Episcopalian differentials. It is suggested that religious values and religious perspectives are important considerations in understanding these findings.
This paper will review research since 1960, and will seek to define the relationship among several social structural determinants of status within each of several religio-ethnic groups. Our guiding hypothesis is that religious values and beliefs interact differently with other variables across these groups in shaping socioeconomic achievement, and decomposition will be used to specify the effects of background factors on achievement among various religio-ethnic groups. The findings reported in this paper are consistent with those of earlier research concerning religio-ethnic differences in education, occupational achievement and income. Scheffe analysis indicated that the hypothesized differences in the relationships among the determinants of socioeconomic achievement are only partly supported. Not only did Irish and Italian Catholics not differ from Methodists on any of the measures used, but Episcopalian and Baptist differentials were smaller than those of Jews. Jews exceed Methodists in income, occupational prestige, and educational achievement,... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions about Mormons as an identifiable minority. Although the Canadian Constitution of 1982 prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion (as well as ethnic or racial discrimination), examples of religious intolerance continue to be reported by the media. The focus of this paper is on the relationship between tolerance for Mormons and selected religious and non-religious factors. Of particular interest are two social familiarity factors. Data for both Catholics and Anglicans are included for comparative purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Over the past three decades, the theory of religious economy has been established, applied, debated, developed, and rejected. It has proven to be as divisive as any "general theory" of religion should be, and yet its core tenets continue to engage and unite scholars around the world. In response to broader shifts within the sociology of religion, this article reframes religious economy by advancing a spatial approach to its theorization. A spatial approach can help develop new perspectives on the regulation of religion, and the resistant agency of religious groups. With a focus on the "secular monopoly" of Singapore, it demonstrates how the restricted supply of land for religious purposes increases competition between religious groups. To overcome restrictions, religious groups pursue strategies of spatial and organizational boundary crossing. This has led to the closer regulation of space, and highlights the recursive interplay between the regulation and praxis of religion in Singapore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) is a movement within the Roman Catholic Church that has grown dramatically in many parts of the world over the past three decades, including Sub‐Saharan Africa. Since it stresses divine intervention (e.g., miracles and healing), some observers suspect that the CCR deemphasizes the importance of human initiative and depresses civic engagement. In this article, we report the results of an original mass survey and in‐depth interviews conducted in Nigeria and Kenya that suggest that the CCR does not necessarily depress civic engagement and that, depending on the types of individuals involved, the movement may encourage certain types of civic engagement. While we found little evidence that mere membership in the CCR was affecting civic engagement, we did find that the time commitment involved in being an active part of the CCR did negatively affect civic engagement, especially in Kenya. However, we also found evidence that involvement in the CCR was having a positive effect on civic engagement among women in Kenya. The results indicate that the CCR is not a religious movement that is inherently quietist, always and everywhere discouraging participation in public life, and that context matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study aims to understand the reasons why Roman Catholics leave the church based on the example of Austria, a country with high rates of disaffiliation since the 1980s. Although previous research focused mainly on the church tax, this study provides a more comprehensive analysis based on a mixed‐methods approach that reveals the central relevance of the family in the process. We began by conducting and analyzing 19 qualitative interviews with former Catholics. Next we used the Generations and Gender Survey (two‐wave representative panel data) to study the characteristics of Catholics who disaffiliated in the intersurvey period (2008–2012). Two types could be distinguished in the qualitative and the quantitative sample: attached and distant leavers. Both rarely attended religious services and were critical of the church, but attached leavers held a private form of religiosity and engaged in religious practices whereas distant leavers self‐identified as agnostics or atheists. The church tax was the main reason for disaffiliation among attached leavers while distant leavers disaffiliated on ideological grounds. One identical factor, however, was of major importance for explaining church‐leaving behavior among both types: family‐related matters and experiences. We conclude that family members and family transitions play a major role in the process of religious disaffiliation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on non-Hispanics from the 2005 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), this article examines the within-religion association between religious participation and wages for mainline Protestants, conservative Protestants, and Catholics, the three major religious groups in the United States. While previous studies have examined this relationship for women only and using ordinary least squares (OLS), this article further analyzes gender differences and differences along the wage distribution using a quantile regression (QR) approach. The results indicate that high participation in religious services is associated with lower wages among mainline Protestant women and men, and among Catholic men. Among Catholic women, those who are not participating in religious activities earn higher wages relative to those who participate on a weekly basis. Furthermore, this advantage is more pronounced at high wages, as the QR estimates show. These results suggest the importance of defining religious participation in a manner that allows the detection of nonlinear effects. In addition, the findings speak to the importance of religion in the lives of individuals and may benefit policies dealing with male-female wage differentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging adulthood is a period when religious beliefs are likely to be shaped. Studying the influence of religious culture on prosocial behavior among emerging adults aids our understanding of the process and effects of religious socialization. Mormon religious culture places a particularly strong emphasis on caring for family and fellow Mormons. Because intrinsically religious individuals internalize their religious community's values, we hypothesized that the relationship between intrinsic religiosity and volunteering would be stronger among Mormons than among Catholics or non-Catholic Christians. We tested this hypothesis using a sample of Mormon (N = 118), Catholic (N = 304), and non-Catholic Christian (N = 542) emerging adults (18-29 year olds) across three volunteering contexts (religious, family, and secular). Controlling for extrinsic religiosity and worship attendance, the relationship between intrinsic religiosity, and frequency of volunteering was greater among Mormons than Catholics and non-Catholic Christians in the context of religious and family volunteering. However, intrinsic religiosity was not a significant predictor of secular volunteering. Our findings suggest that Mormon culture influences the frequency and type of volunteering engaged in by young Mormon adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between religion and educational ideals in Taiwan is explored using the Taiwan Social Change Survey (1990, 1995, 2000, and 2005). Religion seems to influence the overall level of educational ideals. Both before and after controls, Taiwanese Protestants have the highest educational ideals for both boys and girls; the nonreligious have the second highest ideals. Members of the new religious movement Yi-Guan-Dao and Catholics have the lowest ideals, while folk religionists/Taoists and Buddhists are in the middle and not significantly different from each other. We discuss possible mechanisms of influence and how our findings speak to the available literature on religion and education in the United States and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We hypothesize that the religiously orthodox, who are theologically communitarian/authoritarian in seeing individuals as subsumed by a larger community of believers and as subject to timeless divine law, are more likely to value obedience in children over autonomy than are theological modernists, who are theologically individualistic in seeing individuals, not a deity, as the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong. We hypothesize further that differences in moral cosmology (orthodoxy vs. modernism) within faith traditions are more important for the values adults seek to instile in children than are differences between traditions. Through analyses of national data from the 1998 General Social Survey, we find strong confirmation of both hypotheses. Moral cosmology is the single-most important factor in valuations of obedience and autonomy in children. While evangelical Protestants differ from Catholics, mainline Protestants, and those with no religion in their values for children, moral cosmology is associated with differences in values for children within each of the faith traditions, including evangelical Protestants. We conclude that intra-faith differences in moral cosmology are key in explaining values for children, but have not completely supplanted interfaith differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian Right Organizations in the 1990s have tried to avoid the pitfalls for the religious particularism that undermined the earlier efforts of such groups as Moral Majority to build long lasting political coalitions. For many Christian Right leaders, conservative Catholics appear to be a particularly appealing group to reach for membership recruitment and political coalition-building. Yet such leading groups as the Christian Coalition have largely experienced disappointment with such efforts. This essay presents data that offer reasons why conservative Catholics might be willing to form political coalitions with activists of the Christian Right but remain reluctant to join Christian Right organizations. The findings are based on a large survey of Republican party state convention delegates in four states. The data show that Catholic delegates hold very conservative issue positions in line with Christian Right organizations, and have positive feelings toward Christian Right leaders and organizations. Yet Catholic delegates hold somewhat distinctive positions among Republicans on certain issues, and therefore remain reluctant to join the Christian Coalition and other such groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 1972-1991 GSS data, we create an operational definition of salience of religion and use it to examine church attendance by age and period for two sets of subsamples: Religious Preference Groups (Protestants by gender and race and white Catholics by gender) and Denominational Ideology Groups (white Protestants by gender and religious ideology). We generate three-dimensional age-period-cohort surfaces on church attendance for each group. We find that those for whom religion is salient report weekly attendance and those for whom it is not salient report less than monthly attendance. Among the salient, the pattern of church attendance exhibits no age, period, or cohort effect; among the not salient, variations are linked to age and period across the subgroups. These findings suggest that attendance differences reported by religious preference are largely due to attendance patterns of those least attached to institutional religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the long-term impact of the Shiloh Youth Revival Centers, the largest Jesus People movement of the early 1970s, on its former members. It examines the movement's sustained influence on former members who were part of the group's central core of about 5,000 committed individuals. Shiloh engendered a basic change in their priorities and life choices. After the movement collapsed in 1978, Shilohites did not return to the mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths in which most of them were raised. Instead, they entered strict, conservative religions. Although they departed from Shiloh, they did not disengage. Information about the sustained impact of Shiloh suggests the need for more research about the long-term effects of movement membership upon individuals who no longer belong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of work focus almost exclusively on secular antecedents of work commitment, "work involvement and work as a "central life interest." We argue that religion also influences the way people think of work. We use data from 1,869 Protestants and Catholics to test a theory that includes six religious factors, five work conditions, and other personal attributes. Work-related factors have the most effect, followed by religion, especially religious commitment and social justice beliefs. Among personal attributes, education, family income, and gender have a significant effect on orientations toward work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on lifestyle changes within U.S. Catholic religious orders has neglected to examine the extent to which their members still live communally. In this study, the archives of eight religious congregations of women were examined for 1964 and 1990 to determine changes in living patterns. When compared with 1964, sisters in 1990 lived in much smaller groups and in apartments rather than convents. The composition of the 1990 groups was also much more stable over time. Possible reasons for these changes are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is an attempt to expand a study reported in 1989 of the relationship between religion and concern for the environment in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Here, only one variable was used, willingness to spend money on the environment, but findings were based on a national data set. The finding of the Tulsa study is confirmed: Low levels of environmental concern correlate with a biblical literalism. They also correlate with being Christian and with confidence in the existence of God. On the other hand, support for environmental spending correlates positively with a gracious image of God and with being Catholic. However, explanatory models suggest that it is not biblical literalism as such which relates to lack of environmental concern, but rather a rigid political and religious "story." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the ideological and structural bases for attitudes and political action relating to abortion. Data on abortion attitudes from a random sample of "Middletown" in the fall of 1989 (N = 400) indicated that the strongest effects on abortion attitude stemmed from a belief that life begins at conception, a belief in privacy rights, and religion. Social traditionalism was also found to play an important role in a pro-life stand, but it was influential only for conservative Protestants and not for Catholics. A general commitment to avoid taking anyone's life was significantly related to abortion attitudes but only for Catholics. For political action, the data showed that the pro-life movement was still more important in 1989 than was the pro-choice movement. Party identification was not related to an expressed willingness to use abortion as a political litmus test, but attending pro-Me churches did increase the likelihood that pro-life adherents would use abortion in making voting decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study tested multi-level models that represented relationships among individual-level and community-level measures of religiosity and measures of deviant behavior that individuals reported they would be likely to commit. Data came from 2,667 adult Catholics surveyed as part of the Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life. Results from multivariate analyses supported the argument that the level of religiosity within a given social context affects projected deviance, although there was no evidence of any substantial interaction between personal- and community- level religiosity. Results also suggested that contextual effects are not necessarily consistent across all types of deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]