Research On Religion | 2012

Archive for February, 2012

Christopher Scheitle’s Religious Road Trip

What do you get when to take a seasoned sociologist and a senior research associate, put them in a rented Dodge Charger for six weeks, and them tell them to find academic enlightenment? A religious road trip, that’s what! Christopher Scheitle tells us tales of his trip with Roger Finke to far flung places such as Memphis, Houston, Colorado Springs, San Francisco, Detroit and Brooklyn in search of what the American religious experience is all about. They visit a wide variety of congregations and take away some important lessons about the diversity and similarities of religious folks in the United States. We also find out who is the better driver – Chris or Roger.

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Matt Boswell on Building Redemption Church, Part II

Tags: by-laws, Christmas, church buildings, church membership, church organization, church without walls, denominationalism, Duvall (WA), elders, kit bashing, power outage, public school, Redemption Church, religious pluralism, small groups (re:groups), Tim Tebow, volunteerism

Back in the fall of 2011, we visited with Pastor Matt Boswell about his effort to create a church within a week’s span of time. We pay a return visit with Pastor Boswell to see what the next several months of church-building entails. We discuss the need to create a set of by-laws, define the requirements of membership, and find ways to establish some permanance even though the congregation meets in a high school auditorium. This is part of our ongoing examination of Redemption Church and its week-to-week and month-to-month operations. Note: This is the church that your host attends on an almost weekly basis.

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Gary Scott Smith on Presidential Faith

Tags: 1950s, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, civil war, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George W Bush, George Washington, James Garfield, Jimmy Carter, presidents, Providence, Ronald Reagan, slavery, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, US history, Woodrow Wilson

A week before Presidents’ Day, we visit with Gary Scott Smith of Grove City College to survey the religious beliefs of a dozen or so presidents including Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, JFK, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama and a few others. Along the way we discuss why understanding the faith of our presidents is important, why most people do not know much about it, and how we go about studying the topic.

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Rodney Stark on the Triumph of Christianity, Part 1

Tags: Arianism, Christianity, Constantine, early Christianity, Edict of Milan, gender, Isis, Jesus, Judaism, martyrdom, Mithraism, monotheism, networks, paganism, Paul, plagues, religious persecution, Rodney Stark, Roman Empire, schism

How does a small group of invididuals in a religiously-hostile environment build a sectarian movement of Judaism into the world’s largest faith tradition? Prof. Rodney Stark (Baylor) discusses the important sociological ingredients for Christianity’s success in the first three centuries of its existence. We examine the religious landscape at the time of Jesus’s birth (including both paganism and Judaism), as well as the sometimes surprising role of that mercy, persecution, wealthy individuals, and gender played in the growth of Christianity.

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