Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Dating back to the colonization of America, mainline Protestantism has dominated the religious landscape. Only over the past four decades has the mainline consistently lost shares of the religious market. As participation rates continue to fall, this patter of membership decline, coupled with the growth of religiously conservative churches, has caused inquiry of this phenomenon to center around ‘mainline decline.’ However, taking what we have learned about mainline decline, such as the pernicious cultural effects of individualism and denominational pluralism, few studies have examined how the mainline has actually managed to survive. This study takes up this challenge by taking an in-depth look at a Presbyterian church that has suffered many of the elements of decline—stagnant growth, diminishing resources, and a vague sense of identity—and examines it, in the wake a major organizational transformation, to understand how mainline churches adapt in ways that invigorate and sustain the congregation. Based on six months of participant observations, I find that CPC adapts to its present reality by relinquishing its outmoded ‘family congregational model’ and adopting a ‘congregational model.’ This model enables the church to remain a vital religious community because it “encourages members to understand God as active in their lives and in the world” by looking within the life of the community (Wood 2002: 241). This shifting set of expectations bridges public and private religious life in a way that negates the threat of individualism and pluralism, lending a common narrative that integrates the group.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract

Churches Need Sociology Too: Examining Perspectives on Racism in Evangelical, Mainline and New Thought Congregations

This paper examines the contextually situated understandings and pragmatic realities of church, race, and racism today, highlighting the perspectives and praxis of Evangelical, Mainline and New Thought congregations in the greater Denver area. It is the result of a mixed method quantitative and qualitative study. It discloses responses to areas of sociological and cultural research that remain largely unexplored by the participating churches, namely invisible or rationalized segregation, internalized White privilege, and the systemic nature of institutionalized racism. This research introduces data collected in response to key questions such as, “Is racism still a significant problem in the U.S. today,” “Does race impact your daily life?” and “Should churches be involved in attempts to alleviate racism?” It subsequently analyzes how contemporary Evangelical, Mainline and New Thought congregants appropriate or challenge current racialized understandings and systems in the U.S.

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Publication Type: Internal Paper
Abstract: Sexual politics have been the sticking point for many religious communities and their support for leftist politics, and no issue has typified this problem more than gay rights. Indeed, stock depictions of the culture wars place gay rights as the defining issue separating a purportedly “secular” left from a much-decried “religious” right.

My paper contests this view by telling a more complicated historical account of Mainline Protestant churches and their paradoxical investment in the emerging gay rights movement. The primary texts for this story are a series of denominational reports on sexuality and the family, which were drafted by five different Mainline Protestant church committees between 1967 and 1972. Although these documents primarily addressed concerns over changing patterns for heterosexual courtship and marriage, they also controversially addressed homosexuality and attested to many Protestant leaders’ changing evaluations of the morality of homosexuality and their tentative support for various legislative reforms supporting gays and lesbians.

My paper will offer a close reading of these statements and will consider their meanings within two significant historical developments. The first section of this paper examines the denominational reports in light of Protestant church leaders’ attention to the changing medical categorization for homosexuality. Beginning in the late 1960s, the long reigning classification of homosexuality as a disease faced increasing challenge, culminating in the 1973 removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Illnesses. The denominational reports on sexuality indicate church leaders’ wary assessment of new medical research on homosexuality that challenged church leaders’ longstanding assumptions that homosexuality represented an abnormal condition.

The second section of the paper explores the implications of these statements for church leaders’ support for legislative action benefiting homosexuals. Since the controversial Wolfenden report of 1957, which enlisted the support of prominent British clergymen in the efforts to repeal British sodomy laws. Protestant clergy had discussed various issues related to homosexual law reform. These church documents reflect the growing support of American church leaders for sodomy law reform and their increasing consideration of more controversial legislative appeals for homosexual civil rights.

As they were approved by denominational legislative bodies and church committees, many of these statements recommended certain civil rights measures benefiting homosexuals and encouraged new medical research on homosexuality. Paradoxically, most of them also maintained the sinfulness of homosexuality and the exclusive sanction of heterosexual marital monogamy. In these apparent inconsistencies, the statements underscored and ratified broad societal changes that unsettled the longstanding aggregation of homosexuality as a sin, a sickness and a crime, and they marked a precarious consensus between denominational liberals and conservatives around divisive questions about the morality of homosexual behavior.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study investigates the institutional and organizational ability of communities to build inclusive spaces in response to shifting demographics that result from immigration and transnationalism. I examine the project of building inclusive communities in a study of how two historically white, mainline churches, one liberal Presbyterian and one evangelical, conservative Congregational, developed a multicultural identity seeking to incorporate immigrants into their congregations. Using interview and observational field data, I demonstrate how theology, ethics, and financial difficulties motivated the desire to build a racially inclusive space. Conceptually, the two churches embraced similar models of incorporation that sought to integrate an English-speaking and Spanish-speaking congregation under the auspices of a single, united church. In reality, problems of segregation and isolation for the Spanish-speaking members troubled both congregations; yet, the liberal Presbyterian congregation, which based its model of incorporation on ideas of social justice, was better able to create a racially inclusive space for immigrant populations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract: This paper examines how clergy in mainline Protestant congregations facilitate conversations about homosexuality among church members who have different positions on the issue. While national denominational meetings have clear procedures and rules for conversation and debate, local congregations do not. We examine how clergy create theses rules and spaces for conversation in local congregations by first situating the cause of public conflicts over homosexuality in an emotion, fear, rather than in the “us versus them” kind of culture wars framing evident in their denominations and American society more broadly. From this starting point, clergy do the cultural work, in several patterned ways, necessary to bring members of local congregations into sustained consideration of this and other controversial social issues. Rather than contributing to greater social polarization, this study points to the limits of the culture wars framework and to the ways mainline Protestant clergy and congregations provide members with caring civil repertoires for thinking and talking about homosexuality.