Context of Religious Research

Vol. XII, No. 2, August 2002

 

FROM THE EXECUTIVE OFFICER

Dear RRA Colleague:

The Preliminary Program for our annual meeting in Salt Lake City, 1-3 November can be accessed through our Web site: http://rra.hartsem.edu. Take a look! Hotel information is there, too. You should also have received print material for registration through the mail as well. This year we will continue the traditional three-day layout of sessions, wherein we begin on Friday morning and continue into early Sunday afternoon. I hope you were already planning on attending, but if you were not, then I hope that seeing the program will change your mind! As usual, the worst thing I can see about it is that there are so many good offerings that choice making will be a challenge. Our program chair, Mike McMullen, has been working hard to put together an excellent series of offerings. We also especially look forward to Paul Johnson's Presidential Lecture.

An important part of the summer issue of Context is the Nominating Committee's slate of officers. Kirk Hadaway and the nominating committee you elected have assembled an able list of candidates. This year's slate includes the next Chair of the Nominating Committee, as well as members of our Board of Directors and Nominating Committee. Your ballot must be received by 1 October in order to be counted. Envelopes are provided for this purpose.

Some members are late in paying their 2002-2003 dues. If you are among them, please give this your immediate attention. A red mark on your label is your clue. If you wish, you may pay your dues by placing a check ($24 sustaining; $12 student) in the outside envelope when you return your ballot. Note that the by-law change passed unanimously last year no longer provides for a dues extension without penalty. If you are at an academic institution, I would also like to urge you to ensure that a subscription to the Review is included in your library's holdings. Review subscriptions play a crucial role in the maintenance of the RRA's financial stability.

I hope this spring and summer have been productive for you, and I look forward to hearing some of what you have been doing as you share your work in Salt Lake City.

Bill Swatos

CONFERENCES

Note that if you wish to participate on the program of any of the following conferences, you must act prior to the publication of the next issue of Context of Religious Research.

The BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group plans a Study Day 16 November at Cardiff University (Wales). The theme is "Religious Professionals in the Contemporary World." The deadline for submitting proposals is September 20. More information and forms can be obtained from the Study Group's Web site: www.socrel.org.uk.

A conference on Religiosity in the Secularized World will be held 21-23 March, sponsored by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Objektive Hermeneutik. Papers may be in English or German. Translation will be provided. The deadline for submitting proposals is 31 October. For further information see: www.objektivehermeneutik.de.

Reformed Congregations Engage a Changing World, the Fourth Triennial Conference of the International Society for the Study of Reformed Communities will be held in Edinburgh (Scotland), 27 June - 2 July. Send 250-word abstracts by 15 September to Donald Luidens, Hope College: luidens@hope.edu.

The 27th ISSR/SISR Conference, Religion and Generations will be held 21- 25 July in Turin, Italy. The deadline for abstracts is October 31. For further information, contact the RRA Executive Office bill4329@hotmail.com, and we will forward you the appropriate email.

NEWS OF MEMBERS

The following members have received Louisville Institute awards, 2001-2003: Penny Edgell, Richard Flory, Anthony E. Healy, Alexei Krindatch, Jennifer McKinney, David Sikkink, Bob Woodberry, and David Yamane. Congratulations to all. Information on grant programs currently available may be obtained from the Louisville Institute Web site: www.louisville-institute.org.

SSSR 2002 Research Awardees included RRA members Elaine Howard Ecklund and Eric McDaniel. Congratulations to them as well.

Members' book publications since the last issue include Kevin J. Christiano, William H. Swatos, Jr., and Peter Kivisto, Sociology of Religion: Contemporary Developments (AltaMira); Dane S. Claussen, Sex, Religion, Media (Rowman & Littlefield); and William H. Swatos, Jr. and Luigi Tomasi, From Medieval Pilgrimage to Religious Tourism: The Social and Cultural Economics of Piety (Praeger).

We regret to announce the death of Larry Ingram, of the University of Tennessee, Martin, July 31, 2001, news of which reached us only recently.

 

CANDIDATES FOR NOMINATING COMMITTEE CHAIR

ANTHONY J. BLASI. B.A., St. Edward's University; M.A. (sociology), Notre Dame; M.A., (New Testament), St. Michael's, Toronto; Ph.D. (sociology), Notre Dame; Th.D. (religious ethics), Regis College/University of Toronto. Professor of Sociology, Tennessee State University. Books in the study of religion include Phenomenological Transformation of the Social Scientific Study of Religion, Early Christianity as a Social Movement, Constructing Charisma: The Making of Paul's Public Image, A Sociology of Johannine Christianity, Organized Religion and Seniors' Mental Health, and a history of secular sociology at Catholic Notre Dame (with Donahoe). Co-editor of the Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science Perspectives (with Turcotte and Dhuaime). Former council member and president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and former book review editor of Sociological Analysis. Current council member, Research Committee 22 of the International Sociological Association.

RONALD LAWSON, whose Ph.D. is in sociology and history, teaches in the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College, CUNY (Professor 1984, Associate Professor 1977). He is completing a global study of Seventh-day Adventism, and has already published extensively from this work in RRR, JSSR, SoR, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Church and State, and several edited books. He regularly presents papers at RRA/SSSR and ASR meetings. He has served on committees of both RRA and SSSR, and has been a member of the RRA Nominating Committee for the past two years.

CANDIDATES FOR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

JIM LEWIS was educated at Baylor University (B.A.), Yale Divinity School (M.Div.), and the University of Chicago Divinity School (Ph.D.). He has served as Dean of Students at the University of Chicago Divinity School (1980-1991) and since 1991 as the Executive Director of the Louisville Institute. An American religious historian, he has a particular interest in the history of congregations, especially urban ones. He is the author of The Protestant Experience in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1975: At Home in the City (University of Tennessee Press, 1992) and co-editor with James Wind of the two-volume American Congregations (University of Chicago Press, 1994).

PENNY LONG MARLER is Associate Professor of Religion at Samford University, where she teaches sociology of religion, congregational studies, social theory, and theories of faith development. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Div. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an M.S.S.W. from the Kent School of Social Work (University of Louisville). Books include contributory roles in Young Catholics at the New Millennium: The Religion and Morality of Young Adults in Western Countries (University of Dublin Press, 2000) and Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools (Oxford University Press, 1997). Numerous articles on such topics as church attendance overreporting, denominational switching, religious marginality, and secularization have appeared in edited books and in journals such as ASR, RRR, JSSR, SoR, The Christian Century, and Teaching Sociology.

BOB MILLER is the founding director of the Office of Research and Planning inn the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, serving 285 parishes and 1.3 million Catholics in southeastern Pennsylvania. Prior to coming to work with the Church, he was Dean for Graduate and Continuing Education at Philadelphia University and Assistant Dean for the College of Business at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He also served on the faculty at Rider University and continues to teach at the Thomas Jefferson University School of Graduate Study. His publications include "The effect of life cycle and parishioner perceptions on average household giving in Catholic parishes" (RRR), "The impact of stewardship programs on religious giving: An empirical analysis of Catholic parishes" (Journal of Ministry Marketing and Management), and education-administration contributions to the Journal of Continuing Higher Education and Community and Junior College Quarterly of Research and Practice. His doctorate is from Temple University. He holds an M.B.A. from Drexel University and a bachelor's degree from LaSalle University.

FENGGANG YANG is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Purdue University. He has published a book on conversion and assimilation of Chinese Christians in America, several book chapters and journal articles on immigrant religion and ethnicity, including "Transformations in New Immigrant Religions and Their Global Implications" in ASR and "Religion and Ethnicity among New Immigrants: The Impact of Majority/Minority Status in Home and Host Countries" in JSSR (both with Helen Rose Ebaugh). He is co-editing a book, Asian American Religion: Borders and Boundaries (with Tony Carnes, NYU Press). Recently, he has conducted fieldwork research in Southeast Asia on religious transnationalism, and in China on the growth of Christianity during the marketization process. He has served on the SSSR's Council and Research Award Committee, ASR's Council and Student Paper Award Committee, and the Council of the ASA Section on Asia and Asian America.

CANDIDATES FOR NOMINATING COMMITTEE

JAMES C. CAVENDISH is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of South Florida. His research and publications heavily emphasize the study of religion, social movements, and community. He has published journal articles (JSSR, Social Psychology Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly) that examine such topics as the influence of Christian base communities on democratization in Latin America, conflicts over women's ordination within U.S. religious denominations, church-based community activism among U.S. Catholic parishes, clergy mobilization strategies in church-sponsored anti-drug protests, and the reconciliation of contradictory identities among gay and lesbian Catholics. He is currently working on a project for the U.S. Catholic Bishops designed to assess the Catholic Church's inclusion of African Americans in its life and leadership.

MARY GAUTIER received her B.A. in sociology ad religious studies, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology, from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She also studied at the University of Heidelberg in Germany on a graduate exchange fellowship. Her dissertation was a comparative study of support for democratic values in post-communist societies. She has published three volumes of research on democracy and democratization, as well as articles in several professional journals. Before coming to CARA in June 1998, she taught courses in sociology at LSU and at Texas Christian University. Before that, she was a staff member at a parish in Baton Rouge for six years, where she also served on a variety of diocesan boards and committees. At CARA she edits a quarterly research newsletter, The Cara Report, manages CARA databases on Church information, and specializes in demography and computer-aided mapping.

JOHN P. (Jack) MARCUM is Associate for Survey Research in the Office of Research Services, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Louisville, where he directs The Presbyterian Panel. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, and previously taught at Southern Illinois University, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Iowa. He has published research in RRR, SoR, and JSSR, and is a co-author of Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States 2000, to be published in 2002 by the Glenmary Research Center.

THOMAS ROBBINS is an independent sociologist of religion (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1973) living in Rochester, Minnesota. He is the author of Cults, Converts and Charisma (Sage, 1998), and has co-edited seven collections of original papers including In Gods We Trust (Transaction, 1981, 1990), Millennium, Messiahs and Mayhem (Routledge, 1997), and Misunderstanding Cults (University of Toronto, 2001). He has published numerous articles and essays in social science and religious studies journals.

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