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This article makes a contribution to understanding the impact of social capital on Chinese individual charitable donation and volunteering behaviors. The sample for this study included Chinese individuals aged 18 and older who responded to survey questions about their participation in donation and volunteering activities within the past 12 months (N = 5075). The results from binary logistic regression reveal that bridging networks, civic engagement, organisational activism, and informal networks increase the possibility of charitable donation. Results also demonstrate that social trust, bridging networks, civic engagement, and informal networks have significantly positive effects on increasing individual volunteering behaviour. Results from linear regression display that respondents with religious beliefs (religious capital), high educational attainment (human capital) and high household income (financial capital) can increase the amount of charitable donation. Social trust, bridging networks, and civic engagement increase the amount of individual donation. Bridging networks and civic engagement also increase the duration of volunteering.

This paper revisits the concept of ‘Sacrifice and Stigma’ first introduced in the seminal model of Iannaccone, published in 1992. Iannaccone provides an explanation for the rise of strict churches in face of the decline of liberal ones. He argues that costly and stigmatizing requirements, which make a church distinctive and strict, reduce free-riding in the group, conferring it a competitive edge. His model, however, does not address the question of why certain churches, generally older and larger, become more liberal and easygoing. I argue that for established groups, which rely on intergenerational transmission of religious preference, ‘sacrifice and stigma’ are no longer means of screening free-riders but determine the depreciation rate of the stock of religious capital of the group. Modeling the setting as a differential game, I show that in such circumstances, a reduction in the required ‘sacrifice and stigma’ increases the steady-state level of contribution to the church.

One of the most interesting rational religious choice models is that presented by Durkin and Greeley in a 1991 article. The authors base the problem of uncertainty of religious choice on Pascal’s Wager as a maximization problem of expected benefit and in faith as an insurance. The objective of the present article is to test the Durkin and Greeley hypothesis model for Brazil. Two dependent variables were used in the tests: religious attendance and faith, as in Durkin and Greeley’s original model, and resulted in a highly significant relation. The belief in an after-life had a positive and significant impact on the dependent variable degree of faith. In the case of the tests of the third and last hypothesis of the model, that is, religious attendance and faith are positively related to the religious capital accumulated by the individual, ambiguous results were observed in relation to the confirmation of that hypothesis. An unexpected result turned up: the more conservative the individual showed himself or herself in relation to abortion, the lower was his or her degree of faith and lower was his or her religious frequency.

Purpose It is consensus among Muslim social scientists that religion as an informal institution plays a very important role in building the socio-economic structure of an Islamic state. The transmission of religiosity across generations has important economic implications for a family in particular and a society in general. The Tawhidi methodology is applied for a theoretical model and for the development of the model. The purpose of this study is to determine the transmission of religious capital in an Islamic society. Design/methodology/approach This study by using an index of religiosity for both parents and their offspring has explored the causal relationship between the religiosity across generations. By using three-tier analytical strategies, i.e. zero-order regression, model with control variables and model with mediating variables, this study has regressed two models for each control and mediating variable. Findings The findings for the core variable in all models confirmed the hypothesis of the study that parental religious traits are important determinants of the religiosity of their offspring. For the model of control variables, the variables of area, gender and age of the respondent along with the parental religious index are found to be significant with appropriate signs. For the model with mediating variables, only the variable of parental sharing of religious values along with the parental religious index are found to impact the religiosity of the offspring. Therefore, the nutshell of the findings is that the religious orientation of an offspring is highly influenced by the religious denominations of the parents. The formation of the religious capital is a continuous process and the ultimate result of divine knowledge. Research limitations/implications Data at the national level are not collected for this purpose by governmental organizations in a country like Pakistan because of shortage of funds. Therefore, data are collected by the authors. Practical implications This study will provide guidance to policy-makers for the formulation of their policies. Social implications Intergenerational transmission of religious capital plays a very important role in the moral development of an ideal society. Originality/value This is an original effort and is conducted for the first time in Pakistan.

Evidence from some contemporary ethnic groups suggests that ethnic religion may play a strong role in the lives of second generation members. This is evident in recent studies on Muslims living in Europe. But Europe's immigrant population is not just Muslim in origin. Migratory flows from Latin America, the Philippines and Eastern Europe (i.e. Romania or Ukraine) bring people from Catholic and Christian countries to Europe. And - as in the Italian case - these groups are now the majority among the whole immigrant population. Consequently, the almost exclusive focus on the Islamic component has allowed little investigation of the increase of the Christian-Catholic component. The paper describes and compares the religious paths of immigrants' youth from Peru, the Philippines and Romania, considering the following questions: How do they interact with/develop their religious identity? Is this generation seeking less visible, less participatory means of contact with the church to better integrate with their peers? Or, on the contrary, do they choose, strategically, to reinforce the Catholic part of their identity in order to succeed better in the integration process in a Catholic country? (author's abstract)

Training requirements for ordained clergy vary widely between US denominations, but the most common qualifications include the Master of Divinity (MDiv), a 3-year professional degree typically earned in residence full-time at a seminary or school of theology following completion of an undergraduate degree. However, past research has found that denominations with more limited formal training requirements for clergy tend to grow more rapidly and that professionalized clergy may actually contribute to denominational decline. I test this with Cox regression, comparing job lengths of Lutheran (ELCA) pastors with MDiv degrees and those who completed an alternative training program (TEEM) where older students complete less extensive coursework while simultaneously serving a ministry context. TEEM candidates often continue serving in this context upon being ordained. The key finding is a persistent advantage for TEEM program graduates net of demographic controls, regardless of how age and experience are factored in. The advantage is not the result of ongoing embeddedness in a single context, suggesting it may result from a combination of differences in the structure of formal education and the simultaneous contextual application. Both life experience (age) prior to being ordained and experience in ordained ministry also provide some advantage, but the effects are largely limited to MDiv graduates in their first few years of ministry. The results provide further evidence for the promise of alternative ministry preparation programs, and help elaborate previous theories of clergy religious capital.

Religions as taxa consist of a group of adherents’ common religious knowledge and not of the religious knowledge of individuals. The beliefs and practices of individual believers, of individual adherents of a certain religion, are not decisive for the entire communication and information system “religion”, but rather the individual communities with their internally communicated notions and cultic practices, which represent the individual religion’s repertoire of characteristics. The religious capital of the respective community is characterized by the total sum of the beliefs and behaviours communicated within the respective communities.

This chapter presents a meta-ethnographic analysis of qualitative studies of youth activism in organisations where religion plays a crucial role—albeit not necessarily the most important. Taking theories of social capital as a starting point, the chapter explores how young people understand and experience their participation in religion-based organisations, their perception of politics and the political, and the role of religion in their lives and activism. The findings suggest that, although religion and religious capital play a key role in young people’s participation, especially at the start, religious social capital is transformed gradually into social capital. Togetherness and social activism increase in significance for young people over time, leading, in some cases, to religion and religious affiliation becoming of secondary importance in young people’s participation.

Using pooled data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG 2006–2010), we examine the effects of denominational affiliation, worship service attendance, and religious salience on remarriage timing. Survival analyses indicate that both men and women affiliated with conservative Protestant faith traditions are significantly more likely than their unaffiliated and Catholic counterparts to remarry at an accelerated pace following divorce. Results further show that, net of religious affiliation and socio-demographic characteristics, worship service attendance accelerates remarriage timing, whereas the effects of religious salience are weaker or unobserved. These results are largely consistent with prior research on denominational variations in the timing of first marriage and underscore the robust influence of religion on the institution of marriage.

This article uses data from the 2006 Social Capital Community Survey to examine the impact of social capital, religious capital, human capital, and attitudes on volunteerism. Five alternative structural models are estimated. Tests reveal unambiguously the inferiority of the Tobit model and point to a double-hurdle model with independent errors as the best alternative. Major findings are that more diversity in friendships and more education increase the likelihood of volunteering, greater intensity of religious belief increases the level of volunteerism, and more informal social networking and formal group involvement along with greater religious participation increase both the likelihood and level of volunteering. Study results suggest strongly that the nonprofit voluntary sector has a vested interest in promoting policies that expand educational opportunities and foster civil engagement, social interaction, and religious participation.

African American faith communities are an important source of social capital. The present study adapted a theory-based social capital instrument to result in religious (e.g., from organized worship) and spiritual (e.g., from relationship with higher power) capital measures. Data from a national sample of 803 African Americans suggest the instruments have high internal reliability and are distinct from general religiosity. Measurement models confirmed factor structures. Religious capital was positively associated with self-rated health status. Religious and spiritual capital were negatively associated with depressive symptoms, but these associations largely became nonsignificant in multivariate models that controlled for demographic characteristics. An exception is for spiritual capital in the form of community participation, which retained a negative association with depressive symptoms. These instruments may have applied value for health promotion research and practice in African American communities.

Spiritual and religious capital are forms of the broader construct of social capital. The present study, using probability-based sampling methods, surveyed a national sample of African American adults to examine the relative contributions of spiritual and religious capital to their physical and emotional functioning. Analyses were conducted to determine if these constructs made a unique contribution above and beyond general social capital. African American men and women (N = 803) were interviewed by telephone. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that, across the full sample, although social capital was a positive predictor of physical and emotional functioning (p

The assumption of rationally motivated individual religious behavior was tested in a survey of undergraduate university students from four different cultural/religious environments: Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and the United States of America. In particular, an attempt was made to explain readiness to bear religious costs by the expectation of otherworldly rewards and some other variables, such as religious socialization, support in the upbringing of children, religious capital, satisfaction with religious services and the perceived social sanctions for possible religious nonparticipation. It was found that it is the otherworldly rewards in all the samples that explain by far the major part of the variance in the readiness to bear religious costs. These results suggest that individuals do tend to make rational choices even when it comes to religion. Based on their beliefs, they are ready to accept religious costs approximately to the level of their expectation of otherworldly rewards.

Using a subsample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97), this study ( N = 2,471) provides evidence in support of social capital and socialization theories. Intergenerational transmission of civic engagement activities was found to occur through mechanisms such as parental religiosity and voluntarism. Using multinomial logistic regression analysis, correlates of four types of civic engagement were examined: mixed motivation voluntarism (voluntary participation in activist and nonactivist activities, n = 401), exclusively activist ( n = 109), exclusive voluntarism ( n = 652), and as the referent non—civic minded (no voluntary participation in either activist or nonactivist activities, n = 1,309). Parental voluntarism, socialization, religious participation, education, and presence of children were found to be robust predictors of mixed motivation voluntarism; parental devotion, presence of children, and race/ethnicity, of exclusive activism; and parental religious affiliation and fundamentalism, socialization, and religious participation, self-perceived sense of trustfulness, presence of children, and race/ethnicity of exclusive voluntarism.

Research on volunteering behavior has consistently found a positive relationship between religion and volunteering. Using a sample of churchgoing Protestants (N=1,738)from the Religious Identity and Influence Survey we examine the specific influences of religiosity, religious identity, religious socialization, and religious social networks on local volunteer activity in church programs and non-church organizations, as well as general volunteering tendencies. These influences are presented within the theoretical framework of religious capital. Logistic regression techniques were applied to determine the strength of the contribution of these influences while accounting for basic background factors. Findings suggest that churchgoing Protestants are influenced by all measures to some degree, but religiosity (specifically participation in church activities) remains the strongest influence. Significant religious influences overall are most pronounced within the context of church-related volunteering which suggests that churchgoing Protestants exhibit a strong sense of community identity through their local churches. A discussion of these results and their implications for volunteering follows.

A reduced form two equation set up is estimated where the endogenous variables are the intensity of religious belief and the frequency of attendance at services. A sample of 4548 people was obtained from a household interview study conducted in the UK in 1990–1. The results show differences between faiths in terms of relative frequency of service attendance and the intensity of conviction. Variables that proxy elements of the allocation of time model are statistically significant. There are very large and significant independent effects of parental religious belief and persistence of the beliefs held in adolescence.

Research in the sociology of work has long considered the importance of individual worker values but has not considered one of the central sources of those values: the congregation. In this study, we examine this understudied relationship and propose greater theoretical specification on religious capital. We argue that religious capital, like social capital, may have bridging characteristics. We introduce the concept of workplace-bridging religious capital (WBRC) and describe its cultivation within congregations. Using data from a survey of 1,000 fulltime workers, we test the relationship of WBRC (measured with a 15-item Congregational Faith at Work Scale, CFWS) to workplace commitment, job satisfaction, and entrepreneurial behavior. While CFWS alone is not significantly related to workplace commitment or job satisfaction, the interaction of CFWS and church attendance is significant for all three workplace outcomes. Thus, the influence of congregational beliefs on work attitudes and practices is contingent upon an individual’s level of involvement in the congregation. This study builds on the growing body of literature that identifies religious influences in nonreligious domains of everyday life.

This chapter presents a case study of prayers and praying in a south of England Street Pastors project called "Street Pastors 'Knightsborough' (SPK)". The study of SPK prayers and praying offers the researcher an opportunity to explore some of the social roles and meanings of prayer in everyday life. Just as prayer work orientates mood, so it also provides an interpretative framework through which to understand the events of the night patrol. The fact that street pastors are recognizably religious is important for people's acceptance of being offered prayer and being prayed for. However, the centrality of prayer to SPK's operation and identity draws attention to the potential vitality of religious capital for civic engagement. SPK volunteers are prayerful citizens, and their contribution to the safety and communal wellbeing of Knightsborough cannot be properly understood apart from prayer. Keywords: England; night patrol; prayer; prayerful citizens; religious capital; Street Pastors 'Knightsborough' (SPK)

There is little research on the relationship between religious involvement, typically measured by church attendance, with the health and health behaviors of Latino immigrants in the United States. This chapter examines the intersection of the three areas: religious involvement, Latino immigrants to the United States, and health outcomes, using quantitative methods with a random national sample of immigrants. The research is theoretically driven, drawing from concepts in the field of sociology, for both social and religious factors, to examine whether religious involvement is associated with health status and health behaviors among Latino immigrants. There are many theories underlying the relationship between religious involvement and health. Potential causal mechanisms of the association between health and participation in religious communities involve multidimensional constructs. In the chapter, key mechanisms are grouped through which religious involvement can impact health into three categories: social resources, social capital magnified, and religious capital. Keywords: health behaviors; Latino immigrants; religious involvement; U.S. population

This article locates the concept of social capital and its faith-basedcorrelates—religious and spiritual capital—within a psychological framework. Upto now, these correlates have been deployed primarily within a social policy and political science discourse. Having located these concepts, the article develops a hypothesis, based on qualitative case study material, that religiously based motivation (spiritual capital) and religiously based participation (religious capital) work in mutually reinforcing ways to produce a virtuous cycle (or feedback loop) of capitals (including bridging and linking forms of capital—as well as bonding).